Fuel price protests in Peru + Indigenous people demanding rights in Brazil + More
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Fuel price protests in Peru + Indigenous people demanding rights in Brazil + More
On this 8th edition of the Weekly Roundup of Protest Events - April 12, 2022
The discursus community is on a mission to break through our news echo chambers. We want to broaden our understanding of current events through wide ranging data harvesting and analytics-based analysis. And it all starts with one of the most foundational democratic phenomenon, protest movements.
Friends,
As the world and news cycles continue to spin, it’s easy to lose sight of the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine.
Thought opposition from Russians might have been one the most promising avenue to stop, or at least contain, Russia’s aggression. But met with such fierce oppression, public discontent can’t be freely expressed and counterbalance Putin’s autocracy.
As the number of Russian protesters arrested now reaches 15000, including activist Oleg Orlov, we can only hope that public outrage might eventually be freely expressed and finally lead to a definitive stop to this aggression ✌️
Olivier
Please visit our interactive dashboard of weekly protests for more in-depth data. It’s updated daily so you can regularly consult the new protest events as they are streaming in.
Fuel Price Protests in Peru
Again, hikes in fuel prices sparked a flash of protests on April 5th, this time in Peru.
Marcelo Gonzales is tired and angry about rapidly increasing living costs in his dusty village on Peru’s desert coast, where food and fuel inflation inflamed by the war in Ukraine has ignited protests that threaten to destabilize the government.
The pressure of making ends meet got to a boiling point where Peruvians took to the street and manifested their exasperation for 24 hours.
We should contextualise those protests, as they were also fed by a political situation which contributed to some of the violence witnessed during those protests.
The protests occurred […] days after an effort to impeach President Castillo failed. Some of the larger protests were organized by Geovani Rafael Diez Villegas, the influential leader of the Union of Multimodal Transport Guilds of Peru (UGTRANM) who had previously collaborated in late 2021 with business executives and right-wing politicians, opposing the Castillo government and whose power is recognized as rivaling the government's own Ministry of Transport and Communications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Peruvian_protests
Following that first wave of protests, the government imposed a curfew, which has widely not been respected. That curfew was then lifted.
"I call for calm and serenity. Social protest is a constitutional right, but it must be done within the law," President Castillo said in a TV address.
The curfew - which will affect some 10 million people - has been widely criticised as "authoritarian" by critics of the president.
Below is a screen capture of our dashboard that focuses on Peru’s protest movement for the past 7 days.
Elsewhere around the world
🇧🇷 Indigenous people demanding rights.
The Brazilian government is trying to speed up the passage of several bills seen as harmful to indigenous people and the environment, including one to legalise mining in reserves.
🇬🇪 Ex-Soviet Georgian government has been heavily criticized since the invasion of Ukraine for not sanctioning Russia.
“If my Ukrainian brothers and sisters see this then I want them to know that the actions of our prime minister had nothing to do with the Georgian people.”
🇱🇰 Last week we focused on the protests in Sri Lanka, but we haven’t looked at how expat communities are also protesting outside of Sri Lanka. For example, a group protested in front of the President son’s house in Los Angeles.
There’s also been quite a few developments on the political front this week in Sri Lanka, such as the president losing its majority. As well as the government announcing that they will default repayment of their debt unless they receive bailout from the IMF.
🇸🇩 Continuing protests in Sudan against military coup.
“We are going out today because we promised our martyrs [that we will] fulfil the civilian state,” protester Yousif Abdallah, 34, said.
🇵🇰 Protest against the removal of Imran Khan as prime minister by the opposition.
Earlier in the day, ousted Prime Minister Khan tweeted that today marked the beginning of a “freedom struggle” against what he said was a “foreign conspiracy of regime change” in Pakistan.