005. Declarations of indictment and intention

The Bologna Process, a European agreement signed by Germany in 1999, made degree programs comparable throughout Europe.  In Germany this meant that programs originally designed to last five or six years were compressed into three or four, creating a degree program quite similar to the United States’.  This substantially increased the course load for students.  Decreased funding for universities also meant a poorer standard of education, larger classes, and the implementation of tuition fees.  Between February and December 2009, thousands of German students protested thes

In 1977, Guyana was in the midst of a long power struggle between the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which had ruled the country until 1964, and the People’s National Congress (PNC) led by Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, who had ruled since before the country’s independence from Great Britain in 1966.  Since 1966 the PPP had been trying to regain governmental power from the PNC.  Trade unions in Guyana were often at the forefront of this struggle, and would begin strikes for both political and economic reasons.

In May 2007, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced a 34 percent salary increase for all civil servants in Burundi.  This increase, which the government was to implement in July 2007, followed a year after the government had more than doubled the salaries of military and security personnel.  Despite President Nkurunziza’s promise, the International Monetary Fund, which provided much of the international aid to Burundi, urged against the salary increase.  Citing lack of funds, by September 2007 the government had still not implemented the 34 percent increase while Nku

In 2009, Hartmarx Corporation workers fought to maintain their company and prevent liquidation. Legal and financial actions were taken in this fight. The course of nonviolent action that Hartmarx employees carried out only took place over a month. Hartmarx sought to convince Wells Fargo Bank, the company’s main creditor, to approve the sale of Hartmarx to a suitable buyer that would keep the company in business.

Shortly after World War II, the United States began nuclear testing, mainly in Nevada. In September 1957, the United States announced its plan to conduct atomic testing in the Marshall Islands, starting April 5, 1958. In response to the adverse effects of the Nevada nuclear tests, the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) launched a protest to stop the United States from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, first by petitioning and then sailing to the test site in protest.

In 2004 the Azerbaijan government issued a presidential decree stating that students planning to attend universities would have to take a test through the State Commission for Students’ Admission.  According to this decree, students could only be legally admitted to a university based on this test and not on any other.  However, that year Independent Azerbaijan University (IAU), a private university in the city of Baku, admitted 1,700 students who had not taken the state-sanctioned test.  Two years later, in the spring of 2006, the Azerbaijan Ministry of Education announced t

General Moussa Traoré obtained power in Mali in 1968 when he led a military coup d’etat that overthrew the left-leaning nationalist government that had ruled since 1960.  Opposition towards Traoré grew during the 1980s, but didn’t fully emerge until the 1990s.  During this time, Traoré imposed programs to satisfy demands of the International Monetary Fund, which brought increased hardship upon the country’s population while elites lived in luxury.

In 2009, thirty-three stevedores were dismissed from their jobs in various ports throughout Finland, and by January of 2010, they still had not received sufficient compensation as reported by the Transport Worker’s Union (AKT). At the beginning of the month, the union began talks with the national employers to come to an agreement about severance pay and other issues such as wage increase and regulatory job protections; however, by mid-month the negotiations had slowed down to a near halt. The union threatened a 24-hour strike. On 21 January, they carried through on their promise.

Swaziland borders South Africa and has a population of about one million.  At the time of the campaign Swaziland had the world’s highest HIV infection rate and was both one of the poorest nations in the world and the home of Africa’s last absolute monarchy.   While King Mswati III was a largely popular figure in Swaziland, he angered Swazis with his lavish lifestyle and high number of wives.  Between 2000 and 2010, activists worked to promote a democratic government.

On January 25, 2010, the United States government ordered three detainees, Adel Fattough Ali El-Gazzar, Poolad Tsiradzho, and Rafiq al-Hami to be relocated from Guantánamo Bay Prison in Cuba to a facility in Slovakia. At the same time, the U.S. government moved other Guantánamo detainees to other European countries, as part of an attempt to relocate all of the detainees and shut down the facility. The United States sent 32 prisoners to various European countries, but both the U.S.

Mozambique, long a Portuguese colony, acquired independence from Portugal in 1975 after ten years of war. Soon after gaining independence, the large Portuguese population of Mozambique left Mozambique, harming the economic situation in the process. To further worsen matters in Mozambique, the country became entrenched in a civil war just two years after the drawn-out conflict with Portugal. Like the conflict with Portugal, the civil war lasted for an extended period of time.

The Togolese President Gnassingbé Eyadema came to power in 1967 after he led the army in a bloodless coup to take over the previously multi-party government.  By 1990, Eyadema had been president for 23 years and had banned all political parties except for his Rally of the Togolese People.  President Eyadema had been able to keep the country’s economy relatively stable at the same time as he put many of his Kabye tribe members into top government and military posts.  Nearly 70% of all members of the military were from the Kabye tribe, despite the fact that the Ewe tribe repres

On Thursday, October 9, Montenegro announced its official recognition of the independent country of Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia.  Four separate opposition political parties worked in conjunction and called for a protest in response to the recognition. They declared that the government's decision to recognize Kosovo was illegal. Reports say that on Monday, October 13, approximately 10,000 protestersappeared at the rally.

Over a period of two months in 2009, Saint Lucia prison officers organized a petition and a sick-in to protest the return of a former Director of Prisons. Hillary Herman had voluntarily left his position as Director of Prisons in 2008 (after a 7-year stay in the position). Most of the prison officers at Bordelais corrections facility in St. Lucia did not want Herman to come back. They found his strict methods to be inefficient and unfair.

In the beginning of 2002, many workers in Macedonia – both private and public sector – were unhappy with their salaries and benefits. In the private sector, many industries were not making a profit, and as yet, had no security regarding future employment; their unions had proposed early retirement for the 37,000 workers at issue, but the government claimed that they did not have sufficient money to enable such a solution.

In the late nineteenth century, the Argentinian working class had gained greater self-identification during the economic crisis of 1898–1904, when labor strikes – an unknown phenomenon up to then – unleashed the rapid expansion of labor organizing and labor unions, and the national FORA (Regional Argentinian Workers' Federation) was created. In the first decade of the 20th century, union actions were met with extreme repression by the state, which proved incapable of responding through conciliation, leading to general strikes in 1902, 1904, and 1906.

As on many Pacific islands, the British colonial rulers of the Solomon Islands set up an economy based on an inter-island trade in indigenous labor. Islanders were often just as happy to avoid the labor trade and continue living in their traditional subsistence economy, so the British instituted coercive methods to encourage people to work on plantations and, during World War II, in military industries. One of these methods was a strict indentured labor system that prohibited laborers from removing themselves from contracts once signed.

The Ogoni region is a highly oil-rich area in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, populated by approximately 500,000 members of the Ogoni People.  Since the Shell Petroleum Development Company discovered oil in Ogoniland in 1958, the region has been plagued with serious environmental degradation resulting from the over 100 oil wells in the area.

In 1980, the government of Guam employed over 9,000 workers, or 27% of all jobs on the island. Approximately half of these public workers were teachers. 2,400 teachers were members of the Guam Federation of Teachers (GFT), the largest union on the island. As teachers’ pay consistently lagged behind the national average salary, the GFT organized a petition drive in 1980 to hold a referendum on whether government employees should receive a 30% cost-of living wage increase.

Benin gained its independence from France in 1960 and was then named Dahomey.  Colonel Mathieu Kérékou took power of the country in a coup in 1972 and later renamed the country the People’s Republic of Benin, organized the economy under a Marxist-Leninist ideology, and outlawed all political parties except his People’s Revolutionary Party of Benin.  By the 1980s, Kérékou remained as the president of Benin, but the economy was failing.  The government had to lower government aid to students and the salaries for civil servants and in 1988 the state owned banks crashed.  Fa

In 1905, Korea was placed under the military rule of Japan and in 1910 it was officially annexed as part of Japan’s thirty-five year imperialist expansion.  In Korea, the period of Japanese rule (between 1910 and 1945) is generally referred to as a “Japanese forced occupation,” and there was widespread discontent within Korea over Japan’s management and strict control of the region.

Starting in 2001, rebels supporting the leader François Bozize attempted coups to overthrow President Ange-Félix Patassé in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. The political unrest during this time resulted in a drop of the country’s economy. The government fell behind in payments to many civil servants, such as teachers, and made a priority of paying soldiers to fight the rebels. The teachers demanded that the government pay them nine months of their salaries from the total of twenty-three months in arrears.

In April of 1899, employees of the Niagara Silver Company organized a new union branch: The Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers, and Brassworkers' International Union of North America, Local No. 155. About 100 workers of the company were part of the union, with fellow employee George Furniss as President.     W. A. Jameson, manager of the Niagara Steel Company, appeared before his employees on May 19 and advised against membership in the union.

In early March of 2006, two proposed captive dolphin facilities received government authorization to begin planning their parks. The two facilities, Dolphin Cove and Dolphin Discovery, still needed to fulfill various requirements to open for business; the government permission only extended through the building stage of the project. One condition for eventual business was a statement from the Department of Environment that the facilities would not cause serious or irreversible environmental damage, and that the facilities would have controls in place to ensure as much.

In 2007, a group of New York University (NYU) students called Students Creating Radical Change decided to campaign for disclosure and transparency. They started forming the group Take Back NYU! (TBNYU) and started in October with an event called "What is NYU Hiding?" They followed it shortly with another event, called "What is NYU Hiding in Abu Dhabi?"