solidaction05

Appeal

By:

Occupied Palestine and Golan Heights
Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI)

On:
Concern about current conditions in Palestine

http://www.jai-pal.org/content.php?page=408

The apartheid wall which separates many Palestinians from their homes,
work and schools snakes through the outskirts of Jeruselem.

The wall, much higher and longer than the infamous Berlin Wall continues to be built despite protests from Palestinians and members of the international community.

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Tak Bai Incident in Thailand

On October 25th, people from the southern provinces in Thailand held a memorial service for all of the people killed in the infamous "Tak Bai Incident" two years earlier. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have continued to call on the government of Thailand to bring to justice those responsible for the death of more than 80 people killed either by bullets or from suffocation after being packed into army trucks and transported a great distance to be placed in detention. The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International report state the following:

On October 25, 2004 , security personnel from various units were mobilized to disperse Muslim protesters in front of a police station in Tak Bai district in the southern province of Narathiwat. Seven protesters were shot dead at the scene, while 78 others suffocated or were crushed to death as they were being transported to detention facilities. Some 1,200 people were held in military custody for several days without appropriate medical attention. As a result, many protesters suffered severe injuries that required amputation of their limbs.

No security personnel have ever been held accountable in connection with the Tak Bai incident, but 58 Muslim protestors were charged for having allegedly committed criminal offenses.

For more information, go here

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Announcing an international conference:

The Politics of Empire and the Culture of Dialogue: Intellectual and Organisational Signposts for the Future

La Trobe University Melbourne â”€ 12-13 December 2006

Since the designation of 2001 as the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations and the events of September 11 2001, dialogue has become a recurring and often controversial theme in international discourse. At a time of political turmoil and violence, critics have labelled the notion of inter-cultural dialogue as idealistic, naÃ¯ve, rhetorical, and even dangerous. For its advocates, the dialogue of cultures, religions and civilisations offers one of the more promising contributions to public debate on how we diagnose the present and plan for the future.