A wave of mass struggle has surged in Haiti, anti-regime riots and protests washing over the country over the last nine weeks. Sparked by fuel price increases, the protests have linked dire living conditions to the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
Minoo Jalali was among those who resisted Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran. In the early months of 1979, she joined a mass women’s protest against the compulsory wearing of the hijab in public. “That revolution was inevitable”, Jalali recounted 40 years later in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “Nobody could have really stopped the force of it. We hoped that we could steer it [but] we were wrong. And the clergy hijacked it ... and deceived many people.”
Protests and riots have spread across Iran after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was murdered by the morality police. Amini was visiting the capital, Tehran, on 13 September when she was arrested for allegedly breaking mandatory veiling laws. Police beat her into a coma and she died three days later. Amini was buried in her hometown of Saqqez.
A fresh wave of strikes and protests has swept across Iran since the beginning of 2022. Protests over water shortages and bread prices, as well as national strikes by teachers, have rocked the country. From the smallest province Khorasan, to the capital Tehran, people have taken to the streets with two chants: “Death to the dictator” and “Victory to the workers”.
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has finally been toppled after days of mass protests in the capital, Colombo. Hundreds of thousands of people descended on the city on 9 July, exactly three months after the #GotaGoGama (go home Gotabaya) movement began.
After eighteen days of mass protests, an “agreement for peace” was reached between the Ecuadorian government and leading social organisations on 30 June to return stability to the country. The protests were in response to President Guillermo Lasso’s plan to cut fuel subsidies and were led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), an umbrella organisation of various groups with a history of leading rebellions that have ousted several presidents.