NEW YORK — Small groups of Americans opposed to the Iraq war and the death penalty decried Saddam Hussein’s execution, and the centre headed by one of the former dictator’s lawyers said the hanging was part of a plan by President George Bush to escalate the war.

The small rallies on Saturday in New York’s Times Square and in Boston, led by a group affiliated with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, were among several condemnations of Saddam’s hanging.

Activists in Detroit also planned their own demonstration. Clark, who leads the New York-based International Action Center and was one of Saddam’s defence lawyers, predicted during the Iraqi leader’s trial that a bloodbath would follow if he was executed.
In a statement, the center said his hanging was part of a plan by Bush to escalate the war. (more…)

On the morning of January 1, 2007, Chinese authorities arrested over 200 protesters on Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen public security, armed police and plainclothes officers were on the scene to interrogate and arrest demonstrators.

Voicing a variety of complaints, the majority of these protesters came from all across China. Demonstrators were arrested in several groups near the exit of an underground tunnel leading to the Square. Police hauled off five vehicles full of protesters.

Tiananmen Square was not the only location where New Year’s dissidents have been apprehended. Laying bait for attests, authorities infiltrated several villages, circulating rumors of a planned protest at Shijing Hill on New Year’s Day. Caught in this trap, individuals later found at Shijing Hill were taken into police custody. Beijing human rights advocate Liu Anjun believes that a dozen people were arrested at Shijing Hill and are being kept by local authorities.

Just before the New Year, several groups of demonstrators protesting outside of Chinese primer Wen Jiabao’s house were apprehended by authorities. Their whereabouts are currently not known. (more…)

Hundreds of supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein have been protesting in the cities of Baghdad, Tikrit and Samarra against his hanging.

Many of the protesters vowed revenge for Saturday’s execution, describing it as a criminal act of cowardice orchestrated by American overlords.

The Sunni Arab demonstrations came a day after celebrations in Shia areas.

Saddam Hussein’s eldest daughter, Raghad, joined hundreds of people in a protest in Jordan’s capital Amman.

“God bless you! I thank your for honouring Saddam the martyr,” she told the demonstrators, in a surprise public appearance.

The former president’s two older daughters sought refuge in Jordan four months after the US-led invasion in April 2003.

Further protests were reported around the Muslim world, including in the Palestinian territories and Indian-administered Kashmir. (more…)

Protesters in Germany have attacked a luxury hotel where the next G8 summit will be held in June. The action comes just days after an arson attack on a politician’s house. Meanwhile politicians bicker over who will pay for the massive security operation.

Anti-globalization protests have become a routine part of the annual G8 economic summits, and activism against the meeting in Germany planned for June 2007 has already started — with attacks this week on a politician’s house and the luxury hotel that will host world leaders.

The Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm on Germany’s Baltic coast was attacked with paint balls in the early hours of Thursday morning. According to the interior minister of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the hotel is located, the attack caused damage to a value of €1,900 ($2,500). Leaders from the G8 member states will meet in the hotel at the summit in June 2007.

An unnamed group sent a letter to the German news agency DPA claiming responsibility and writing that the attack was a prelude to a series of protests against the summit. “It doesn’t matter how many police are on the ground,” the letter read. “There are more of us and we want to be at the site. And we will manage to do that.” (more…)

New York City violated the U.S. Constitution for more than two months in 2001 with a policy to detain arrested protesters overnight instead of giving them summonses to appear in court, a U.S. federal jury found on Monday.

The suit stemmed from the city’s handling of the mass protests and arrests in New York immediately after the 1999 killing by police of unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo, who was hit by 19 shots.

An eight-person jury in Manhattan federal court found that the city’s police department violated the First Amendment right to free speech and the 14th Amendment right to due process between May 1, 2001, and July 13, 2001, by its policy of locking up protesters overnight in city jails. (more…)

Russian authorities pulled hundreds of opposition activists off buses and trains and detained them along with scores of others on Saturday ahead of a rare anti-government rally in Moscow, organizers said.

The police action did not prevent more than 2,000 people from gathering in a central square, where leftist and liberal groups demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin stop what they called Russia’s retreat from democracy.

“In 15 months political power will be changed,” said Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who is now an opposition leader, referring to the March 2008 presidential election.

“Next year everyone should make a personal decision about what to do with our country _ whether we allow these people to continue their illegal undertakings … or we finally make our main goal to build a democratic and socially oriented state,” Kasyanov told demonstrators. (more…)

PARIS — She is a former marine, a native Californian and, now, an ex-American who prefers to remain discreet about abandoning her citizenship. After 10 years of warily considering options, she turned in her United States passport last month without ceremony, becoming an alien in the view of her homeland.

“It’s a really hard thing to do,” said the woman, a 16-year resident of Geneva who had tired of the cost and time of filing yearly United States tax returns on top of her Swiss taxes. “I just kept putting this off. But it’s my kids and the estate tax. I don’t care if I die with only one Swiss franc to my name, but the U.S. shouldn’t get money I earned here when I die.”

Historically, small numbers of Americans have turned in their passports every year for political and economic reasons, with the numbers reaching a high of about 2,000 during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.

But after Congress sharply raised taxes this year for many Americans living abroad, some international tax lawyers say they detect rising demand from citizens to renounce ties with the United States, the only developed country that taxes it citizens while they live overseas. Americans abroad are also taxed in the countries where they live. (more…)

This Sunday’s Human Rights Day has been renamed “Human Rights and Impeachment Day,” as groups hold rallies across the United States calling for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to be impeached. This Sunday marks the 58th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The purpose of the events is to organize people to lobby their Congress Members for investigations and impeachment and to lobby their local and state governments for resolutions in support of impeachment,” Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik writes.

The rallies were “kicked off” yesterday at a New York City forum which featured former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the Judiciary Committee during Nixon’s impeachment hearings, and anti-war “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed while serving in Iraq over two-and-a-half years ago. (more…)