During a high-level visit to Tehran earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed his country’s official position demanding a restoration of the pre-war situation in the Persian Gulf region and guarantees that there will be no return to war against Iran in the future.
Lavrov also claimed that his country was ready to assist in “searching for mutually acceptable solutions to resolve” the “artificial” crisis created by “unprovoked US-Israeli aggression” against Iran.
Later on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated the offer of mediation during the visit of Steve Witkoff, the White House’s special envoy to the Middle East, to Moscow.
Lavrov, who visited Iran on Monday, October 18, also reiterated the Russian position that Iran’s responses to US aggression was justified and legitimate and claimed his country has provided whatever political and economic assistance it could to help it face the repercussions of the unlawful US-Israeli war.
Lavrov’s statement could be seen as a rebuttal to US President Donald Trump, who appreciated Russia’s supposed neutral role in Iran during the eight-month-long war.
Trump claimed it was a “positive” development that Russia did nothing to help and was even “laying off Iran” as the US is hitting Iranians economically and militarily.
Trump was forced to withdraw some of its sanctions on Russian energy exports, imposed from 2024, in his bid to secure an energy deal earlier this month.
Trump’s move is largely seen as an attempt to lower the impact of the rising gas prices on the prospects of Republican candidates before the upcoming midterm elections.
Lavrov, however, cited the Russian veto in the UN against the US attempts to justify its military aggression against Iran, providing humanitarian aid including medicine, other medical supplies and food during the war also claiming that such aid is continued to be “delivered regularly.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian also appreciated the Russian help during the war and expressed his country’s desire to further deepen cooperation between the two countries.
Iran and Russia signed and implemented a 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty last year. The treaty has provisions of close coordination on issues related to economy, geo-politics, and security.
Lavrov pointed out the growing bilateral trade between the two countries in the last two years, despite the war and sanctions they are both facing. According to him, in the first eight months of the present year, the bilateral trade between Russia and Iran grew 10% in comparison to the same period last year.
Lavrov also informed that Russian scientists who were withdrawn from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant during the war have started returning gradually.
Russia and Iran are closer than ever
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi claimed that bilateral relations and cooperation between Russia and Iran has never been as good as it was today.
While addressing a joint press conference with Lavrov in Tehran on Monday, Araghchi reiterated that both the countries maintain close cooperation and consultation on all regional issues, including Iranian relations with the US.
He claimed that the two countries agree that the instability and disruption in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz is a result of unprovoked US-Israeli aggression and that they share the vision of a diplomatic solution to all outstanding conflicts.
Talking about their mutual understanding about regional issues, such as Lebanon and Palestine, Araghchi claimed that both Russia and Iran agree the “genocide of the Palestinian people and the Israeli regime’s dangerous expansionism in the region must stop.”
Lavrov alleged that some countries are trying to push the Palestinian issue to the background, which should not be allowed. He stated that both Iran and Russia would push for the implementation of all relevant UN resolutions because it is “crucial to intensify efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue.”
Lavrov also demanded an end to all Israeli hostilities in Lebanon and peace in Yemen, demanding the full implementation of all relevant UN resolutions and previous understandings.
Lavrov rejected US threats of secondary sanctions over its relationship with Iran, claiming “despite the challenging situation … Russia has no intention to abandon the implementation of economic and investment agreements with Iran.”
As a part of its ongoing war, the Trump administration had announced the complete economic isolation of Iran in August, threatening secondary sanctions against all the countries who still maintained economic relations with it.
Only a handful of countries, such as the UAE, have announced compliance with the US attempts to economically isolate Iran so far.
On the opening day of its National Smallholder Farmers’ Conference and 31st Annual General Meeting (AGM), held from September 29 to October 1, MVIWATA, Tanzania’s national network of smallholder farmers’ groups, set aside time during a program on land, seed, and markets to state solidarity with the peoples of Palestine and Cuba, with the ambassadors of both countries present in the hall.
“We, the members of MVIWATA, who have convened in Morogoro for our 31st Annual General Meeting, wish to give a brief statement in support of the people of Palestine and the Cuban people,” read Theodora Pius, MVIWATA’s head of program, opening the statement. The organization said it was “extremely angered by the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people” and “frustrated to see an open silence on war crimes that happen every day against the people of Palestine by the State of Israel and its allies.” It said its solidarity was with all of Palestine, “not only in the Gaza Strip.”
The statement then turned to Cuba, denouncing more than 60 years of US-imposed blockade, it said, imposed because Cubans exercised their freedom to choose their own political system, and went on to articulate what the blockade now means: “no electricity, no fuel, no medicines, no food.” Despite this, the statement said that the Cuban people have continued to send their expertise (doctors above all) to support life in other countries.
The Cuban Ambassador, Yordenis Despaigne Vera, addresses delegates attending the National Smallholder Farmers’ Conference and the 31st Annual General Meeting of MVIWATA.
The Cuban Ambassador, Yordenis Despaigne Vera, thanked the smallholder farmers and described the current stage of the blockade as an energy war. United Nations agencies reinforce this characterization. By May, the Cuban people were living with daily blackouts of up to twenty hours, and more than 100,000 patients, including 11,000 children, were waiting for operations delayed by power cuts and shortages. Cuba’s own health ministry recorded infant mortality rising from 7.1 to 9.9 deaths per thousand live births between 2024 and 2025. The ambassador called the United States program “a silent genocide” and said Tanzania’s government and people had stood with Cuba throughout. A week earlier, at the UN General Assembly, Tanzania’s Vice-President had reaffirmed the country’s “unwavering solidarity with Cuba” against unilateral sanctions. Last October, the Assembly voted 165 to 7, with 12 abstentions, to demand an end to the blockade; Tanzania voted in favor.
The Palestinian ambassador, Salam Abu Sharar, addressed the room of farmers. Land, he said, is close to the hearts of the Palestinian people and of MVIWATA alike, and the question of Palestine “is not about religion; it is about land.” In a hall where the first working session opened with the words “land is life, land is not a commodity,” he spoke the delegates’ own language: the struggle of Tanzania’s peasants and the national liberation of Palestine are one struggle.
The Palestinian ambassador to Tanzania, Salam Abu Sharar with MVIWATA Chairperson Apollo Chamwela. Photo: MVIWATA
MVIWATA has been here before. Its AGM in Njombe in December 2023 condemned Israel’s genocide in Palestine. In July 2025, it hosted the youth of La Via Campesina in Morogoro, whose declaration ended with “Free Palestine!” Within days of that meeting’s close, Israeli forces bulldozed the seed multiplication unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Palestinian farmers’ organization in Hebron, destroying more than seventy local varieties. The same year, MVIWATA and the International Association for Popular Cooperation ran an Africa Bioinputs School in Tanzania, with participants from thirteen countries, including Palestine, learning how farmers make their own fertilizers and pest controls.
On the conference’s final day, the Tanzanian farmers resolved to build their own bank of indigenous seed. In Hebron and in Morogoro, the seed is where the struggle over who feeds whom begins. MVIWATA Chairperson Apollo Chamwela told the ambassadors that the organization stood ready to do for Cuba what it had tried to do for Palestine: collect food if mechanisms for transporting it can be arranged.
MVIWATA is a membership organization of smallholder farmers, founded in 1993 and organized across mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. It was a meeting with a government minister as its guest of honor. Its statement on Palestine and Cuba came in the same breath as its demands for land, seed, and dignified prices for its members’ produce at home. For these farmers, sovereignty over food and sovereignty over territory are one question, whether the territory is a village in Kilosa or a hillside in Hebron.
The hall closed the statement with a call and response. “Long live Palestine! Long live!” “Viva Fidel! Viva!” “Viva the resistance of the people of Palestine! Viva!”
Photo: MVIWATA
Jonis Ghedi-Alasowis the Coordinator of the Pan Africanism Today Secretariat.
In October, BreakThrough News received a letter from Rep. Jason Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee, threatening to personally subpoena seven members of our journalistic, editorial and administrative staff — including Rania Khalek, Zoe Alexandra and Amanda Yee — unless we handed over our financial records and internal communications.
Through its attorneys, BreakThrough News has now issued an official response, which you can read below. Once again, we expressed that we would not surrender our First Amendment rights in the face of a blatantly unconstitutional abuse of power, and that no legitimate legislative basis has been established for this inquiry. In his own statements, Rep. Smith has made no attempt to disguise the fact that his Committee subpoenas are fueled by opposition to BreakThrough’s editorial stances and viewpoints, which he calls “anti-American.”
We have been overwhelmed by support from our community, who have raised their voices in defense of our constitutionally protected right to free speech under the First Amendment. We ask all readers to continue showing their support by signing the petition below and making a donation to help defend the organization.
Our attorneys’ response explains:
“Threatening compulsory depositions of journalists and newsroom staff to compel document production operates as coercive retaliation by explicitly targeting the core editorial leadership and journalistic staff of BreakThrough News. Allowing a congressional committee to haul journalists into deposition rooms to grill them on domestic and foreign policy reporting sets a dangerous precedent of state-sponsored press intimidation that chills independent journalism nationwide and infringes on core First Amendment protections.”
On October 19, a coalition of ten major civil liberties and press freedom organizations, led by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, issued a joint letter to Rep. Smith demanding an end to the persecution of BreakThrough.
The letter noted: “Serially subpoenaing employees of a small left-wing news outlet to compel them to personally appear before you, for no reason other than to further a vindictive political stunt, is beyond the pale and reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”
We are deeply appreciative of organizations that have spoken out: Freedom of the Press Foundation, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Defending Rights & Dissent, First Amendment Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), PEN America, Society of Environmental Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists, and The Media and Democracy Project.
We would like to express our gratitude for the hard work of our legal counsel — the Law Office of Andrew D. Herman and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund — in responding to this outrageous attack.
Finally, we extend our solidarity and appreciation to all the members of our team, who continue to work tirelessly to produce meaningful journalism in the face of federal threats.
Read our full response below issued by BreakThrough’s attorneys.
Schools without heat but billions for war: Across Europe, young people have had enough. Amina Vandenheuvel, MP for the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) and a member of its youth movement RedFox, joins Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek as a rebellion against austerity and war sweeps the continent, from student blockades in Belgium and France to strikes against the draft in Germany and housing encampments in Spain.
Vandenheuvel condemns the police repression of protesters, and explains why politicians keep the focus on property damage to discredit the movement – as the war on Iran and Europe’s rush to rearm for war with Russia push ordinary people to the brink. But she also argues anger alone isn’t enough: young people need political awareness, organization, and an anti-capitalist framework for building a different future – one built for the working class, not endless war and billionaire profiteering.
Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today! #breakthroughnews
Mississippi just said a cop was justified in killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, and that no one will be held accountable in the suspicious death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells.
Prince Williams, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in North Carolina, and Jaden Foy, a student organizer at NC State, join Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek to explain why hundreds of HBCU students across five Southern states walked out of classes on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party to demand justice for Nolan, Kohen, and all the Black youth robbed of their futures by militarized police. Williams and Foy react to Monday’s ruling that the Senatobia police officer was “justified” in firing into the car where Kohen Wiley sat on his mother’s lap, while responding to a call over the suspected shoplifting of diapers at Walmart.
They draw a line from these deaths to Emmett Till and Mississippi’s long history of racist killings covered up as “accidents.” And they make the case for why the South needs a third reconstruction built by organizing – not just voting.
“Those in power are telling us that the murder of a 1-year-old isn’t criminal… What is criminal conduct in this country?” Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today! #breakthroughnews
A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations is calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to abandon its threat to subpoena staffers at BreakThrough News. The House committee has demanded that BreakThrough employees testify before Congress unless the outlet withdraws its First Amendment and other objections to the committee’s earlier subpoenas and document requests by October 20.
The committee says its inquiry is part of a tax-related investigation into one of BreakThrough’s donors. But the committee and its chairman, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., have also accused the outlet of “anti-American rhetoric” and “messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda,” pointing to its criticism of immigration enforcement and of US and Israeli foreign policy. The letter outlines that such statements make clear the investigation is targeting BreakThrough for its viewpoints. The coalition warns that letting Congress interrogate a newsroom over its editorial positions sets a dangerous precedent for journalists of every political persuasion.
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern stated: “Rep. Smith’s shameless targeting of BreakThrough News for editorial viewpoints that he dislikes shows a complete disregard of the First Amendment. Congress has many more important things to do than interrogate an entire nonprofit newsroom because lawmakers speculate that disagreement with their opinions must evidence a conspiracy. The committee has not identified any alleged unlawful conduct by BreakThrough or any legitimate legislative purpose for its investigation. People who themselves hold controversial political views should understand the risk of normalizing fishing expeditions targeting dissent.”
Read the full letter below:
Dear Chairman Smith,
We are a coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations. We are alarmed by your recent correspondence threatening to issue subpoenas to BreakThrough News, a nonprofit organization that publishes news reporting and commentary. Your letter indicates that you plan to demand that virtually every individual associated with BreakThrough’s newsroom, from its editor-in-chief to its social media manager, appear before Congress unless BreakThrough rescinds its well-founded First Amendment and other objections to your prior invasive demands.
The Committee first demanded records from BreakThrough in February, claiming to be pursuing a tax-related probe into donations from Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen based in Shanghai. Those demands and subsequent ones were outrageous in and of themselves, but serially subpoenaing employees of a small left-wing news outlet to compel them to personally appear before you, for no reason other than to further a vindictive political stunt, is beyond the pale and reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.
Although your justifications have repeatedly shifted in your various letters and subpoenas to date, you have admitted the true impetus for the inquiry is the groups’ viewpoints, stating they have “amplified anti-American, foreign-aligned narratives on social media, and pushed messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda.” You further stated, “I will absolutely not stand by and allow our tax code to be abused to push anti-American rhetoric on our home soil.”
The First Amendment protects those who voice even controversial opinions shared by hostile governments abroad, but your primary examples of BreakThrough’s “anti-American” views are criticism of ICE’s tactics and Israel’s U.S.-funded wars – policies that many millions of Americans who have never received funding from or even heard of Mr. Singham also dislike.The fact that foreigners also dislike those policies might underscore their unpopularity, but it does not diminish BreakThrough’s right to share similar views.
Your letter also raises BreakThrough’s alleged connections to a lawfully organized domestic political party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Such connections are not illegal and, like receiving donations from a U.S. citizen living abroad, cannot come close to supporting broad subpoenas seeking a news entity’s internal documents or depositions from its entire staff.
Beyond the blatant unconstitutionality of targeting news outlets for their political views, House subpoenas must serve a legislative purpose. Fishing expeditions do not suffice.
BreakThrough News’s reporting and commentary, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected by the First Amendment, just as your own views are protected no matter how distasteful others may find them. As the Supreme Court wrote over 80 years ago, “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
The First Amendment exists to protect people with politically disfavored views from people like you. Speech that politicians approve of is not in need of constitutional protection.
The threatened subpoenas are clearly designed to target BreakThrough for reporting and editorial viewpoints with which the Committee disagrees. Subpoenas of journalists and newsrooms obstruct First Amendment activity by forcing cash-strapped news outlets to spend time and money defending their rights, and by intimidating not only reporters but also sources, donors, and readers.
We demand that you refrain from issuing further unlawful and retaliatory subpoenas, and drop your entire unconstitutional inquiry into BreakThrough News.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), the main opposition party in the country demanded, on Monday, October 29, the whereabouts of several of its leaders, including the Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Sohail Afridi, kept in “preventive detention” by the state.
The PTI has claimed that Afridi, Speaker of the Provincial Assembly Babar Saleem Swati, and at least six other members of the KP provincial assembly were “missing” since the dismissal of the elected government in the province on October 11.
Afridi and other PTI legislatures were arrested on October 11, hours after Pakistan’s federal government imposed a state of emergency and governor’s rule in the province.
Though the Pakistan government has maintained that the concerned leaders are all in preventive detention, it has neither produced them in court, disclosed their location, or allowed anyone to meet them.
The police has, meanwhile, filed fresh cases of violence and arson against Afridi and other PTI leaders, accusing them of being involved in May 2023 protests against the attempted arrest of the party’s leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Calling the arrest of its leaders an unprecedented and unconstitutional crisis, the PTI has filed several petitions in the courts for their release. On Monday it also demanded an urgent discussion on the matter in the National Assembly.
“The reported detention of elected representatives holding constitutional and parliamentary offices raises serious concerns regarding the functioning of democratic institutions, the representation of the people, and the protection of the rights and privileges of the elected representatives,” the PTI notice for the discussion in the NA says.
Act of political vendetta
The Afridi government in the state was dismissed by the federal government, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sherif, on October 11, over allegations of failing to maintain law and order and prevent terrorism.
However, the dismissal is linked to Afridi leading a “long march” of PTI supporters to the capital, Islamabad. The protesters were demanding the release of Khan, who has been incarcerated since August 2023 on various charges, including the misuse of power, corruption, and violence.
The PTI claims all the charges against Khan are fabricated and politically motivated and were part of the plan of the ruling parties and the armed forces to keep him out of national politics.
Afridi’s dismissal and arrest led to popular protests in different parts of KP in the last week and security forces fortifying the provincial capital Peshawar. The PTI has also alleged that its workers and offices have been attacked since the imposition of Governor’s rule.
At least five people were injured when security forces clashed with the protesters in Bara last week. Hundreds of others were arrested from different parts of the province for attempting to protest the dismissal of the only government led by the opposition party.
The PTI has also filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court against the federal government’s move to dismiss the state government in KP, calling it a violation of the popular right to choose their government and other constitutional provisions.
Its leaders reiterated their allegations about the Sharif government, calling it illegitimate and a stooge of the armed forces. They claimed that the KP government was the “only elected” government in the country and its dismissal was part of a political vendetta.
The PTI, along with other groups in the country have repeatedly alleged that the 2024 national elections were rigged to prevent Imran Khan from coming back to power.
Giorgia Meloni’s administration has announced the deployment of 500 military troops to Milan after a weekend of intense protests and riots resulted in broken windows at luxury shops.
But while mainstream coverage has focused on exclusive brands hiding inventory from angry demonstrators, progressive organizations emphasize that the rage witnessed on the streets of several northern Italian cities is a result of the government’s own policies.
“A Louis Vuitton bag can cost €5,600, while the monthly maximum for the wage guarantee fund in 2026 is €1,340,” wrote the grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB). In a statement on Tuesday, the union cited devastating national statistics, including data showing that over 14% of working-class families live in absolute poverty.
Broken windows can be repaired, USB noted. “Five years of lost wages, an impoverished family, and a denied future cannot be recovered so easily.”
Students oppose austerity at school and beyond
Significant mobilizations preceded the weekend’s protests. On Friday, October 16, roughly 400,000 students flooded the streets for “No Meloni Day”. They criticized the government’s so-called securitization measures which in practice has meant stifling the right to protest, as well as the unabated turn toward war and armament.
Protesters warned that by prioritizing these points over public services and working conditions, Meloni and her ministers knowingly undermine the future of a whole generation.
Echoing developments in France, where teachers’ unions have supported students’ demands over recent weeks of historic struggle for a stronger public education system, educators in Italy began circulating appeals to do the same.
“The established order is the worst of all possible worlds – or comes very close to it – and our schools are a mirror of this: they are falling apart, alienating, militarized,” the appeal reads. “Places where the need to stretch one’s legs is labeled ‘indiscipline,’ and where the ‘foreigner’ is blamed for the decline in knowledge, rather than two decades of underfunding and neglect.”
Real solutions, not repression, needed to address social crisis
Trade unions, teachers, and students all denounced the repression authorities unleashed in response to the protests – both after mobilizations in cities and during school occupations.
“This government – incapable of offering solutions to the social crisis raging across the country – is once again attempting to manage the streets and social discontent solely through the lens of ‘public order,’ while intensifying repression and shrinking the space available for political activity,” emphasized youth organization Cambiare Rotta.
Students opposed the government’s focus on militarization. Source: Cambiare Rotta/Facebook
Teachers specifically called upon others in the system not to endorse crackdowns on students while invoking democratic values. “Democracy today resists in the French and Spanish squares, in the occupied Italian schools, in the resistance to the genocide of the Palestinian people, in the words and deeds of those who oppose the piecemeal world war,” they wrote.
“It is not to be found in threats, in tear gas, in police officers inside schools, or in students maimed by the weapons of our law enforcement. It is not to be found in the unjust rules that too many persist in defending.”
The increased protest activity has given hope that the spark that inspired massive mobilizations throughout 2025 might resurface. It comes less than two weeks before a new general strike – and an international dockworkers’ strike in which Italian port workers are set to play a notable role – on October 30.
Cereal production in Burkina Faso has risen 53% to a record high under the government of Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, who has made food self-sufficiency an urgent priority since coming to power.
The country has produced 124% of the national cereal needs, the agricultural minister, Commander Ismaël Sombié, said earlier this month at the 3rd edition of the National Days of Patriotic Engagement and Citizen Participation (JEPPC).
Paddy rice production for the first time exceeded a million tons in 2025, while Maize production reached well over 2,68 million tons, he added in his address to a panel titled “From field to market: producing and consuming Burkinabe to strengthen our sovereignty.”
Including all other cereals, the total production of over seven million tons is a historic high. It was only 4.66 million tons in 2021-22. It was a tumultuous period. Amid mass protests calling for the expulsion of the troops of Burkina Faso’s former colonizer, France, the regime of President Roch Marc Kaboré, widely perceived in the country as a French puppet, was ousted in a coup.
However, the new military government replacing this regime, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo, dragged its feet on meeting the protesters’ demand for the expulsion of French troops. In this backdrop, another coup followed that September, bringing Captain Ibrahim Traoré to power.
In less than half a year after taking power, he expelled them, asserting Burkina Faso’s sovereignty. However, his government, backed by the anti-France protest movement, trade unions, and progressive sections of the civil society, has repeatedly insisted that sovereignty cannot be consolidated without reducing the country’s dependence on imports for basic food needs.
Soon after swearing in as transitional president that October, Traoré launched the Presidential Initiative for Agricultural Production (2023-2024), which later became part of the larger, more ambitious 2023-2025 Agro-Pastoral and Fisheries Offensive (OAPH), launched in September 2023.
Spending 273.99 billion CFA francs on this initiative, the state developed 11,774 hectares of irrigated areas and 41,275 hectares of lowland areas, making them available to farmers.
It invested in water management, installing 485 high-yield boreholes. It increased mechanization, including by deploying 1,261 tractors. And through this initiative, the state supplied inputs, including 160,560 tons of mineral fertilizer, to farmers and created 418 new storage facilities.
A concrete impact on consumer plates
The 1,008,737 tons of rice produced in 2025 is 101% of the target set under the OAPH. For maize, the 2,686,531 tons produced amounted to 134% of the target achieved.
Presenting these figures to the Council of Ministers on July 31, Amos Kiénou, OAPH’s executive secretary, said that these gains have had a “concrete impact” on the consumer plate.
A bag of maize, for example, “used to cost between 35,000 and 40,000 CFA francs” during lean seasons before this campaign by Traoré’s government, he said. “Today… a bag does not exceed 20,000 CFA francs,” even as the government has set minimum prices of several crops to ensure that farmers are not forced to sell at a loss.
Beyond these carbohydrate sources, the government has also prioritized greater protein availability for the population. Against OAPH’s poultry target of 18,000,000 chickens, 18,262,480 were counted. Fish production rose from 30,574 tons to 58,476 tons during this offensive, although it remained below the target. OAPH also produced 51,818 tonnes of potatoes and renewed 3,170 hectares of mango orchards.
This campaign aimed at achieving food self-sufficiency has generated 91,027 jobs, including 26,202 permanent positions. Women have secured over a third of them. 4,724 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have also found work. During this OAPH, agricultural GDP rose by an average of over 12% annually, while household incomes grew by 4.3%.
Agropastoral, Hydraulic and Fisheries Offensive 2026-2028
With this success to show, the government is set to expand the campaign, launching an even more ambitious Agropastoral, Hydraulic and Fisheries Offensive 2026-2028 in late July this year.
The state funding of 839.99 billion CFA francs is expected to finance this new offensive, which is to develop another 50,000 hectares of irrigated areas and 100,000 hectares of lowlands.
Plantain, sunflower, pineapple, rabbit, oil palm, and cocoa are included as the six emerging sectors in the 2026-2028 offensive. The gains made in maize, potato, mango, livestock-meat, fish and poultry are to be consolidated in this new phase, while rice, milk, soybeans, sesame, peanuts, wheat, cassava, and shea fall under priority sectors.
The plan also targets the building of 418 more storage facilities, including 11 cold rooms and 63 processing units.
The government’s aim is to develop domestic capacity across the entire agricultural value chain – from cultivation to processing to final consumption – to consolidate Burkina Faso’s sovereignty, said agriculture minister Sombié in his remarks on October 7.
The protests demonstrated the opposition’s clear ability to mobilize its base and fill the streets of several Colombian cities, even though the new government is still in its early days.
Protesters – including members of labor unions, Indigenous organizations, opposition parties, and students – marched through the streets of the capital, Bogotá, as well as other major cities across the country, such as Cali, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Riohacha, and Pereira.
In an address to the nation, De la Espriella stated that 98% of the protests were peaceful, though he also warned the demonstrators: “From the very first day of my administration, I have issued a directive that leaves no room for interpretation: peaceful protest is respected, protected, and guaranteed. But violence, vandalism, and any attempt to violate the rights of others will have no place under my administration.”
He also added: “Here there is a state, here there is authority, and here there is a government that respects freedoms, enforces the law, and protects the millions of Colombians who get up early every day to work and build our nation.”
Criticism
The main criticisms leveled against the government focused on the executive branch’s neoliberal agenda and its security policy. According to the protesters, De la Espriella is failing to address the difficult labor, educational, economic, and territorial conditions faced by Colombians; on the contrary, his political agenda is making these circumstances worse.
Specifically, the protesters complained about cuts and adjustments to the budgets of public institutions, the lack of greater public investment in education, and the fear among several indigenous organizations that the government’s new measures will prevent them from freely exercising their right to protest.
In fact, one of the main catalysts for the protests has been the signing of a presidential decree that empowers state agents to intervene more directly against protesters – a move that has been criticized, according to the protesters, for its anti-democratic intent.
On this point, social organizations, such as the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council assert that, fearing a popular backlash like the one Iván Duque faced (which turned into what some called a “rebellion” by young people that lasted several weeks in 2021), De la Espriella signed Decree 1525, which modifies law enforcement protocols to give state forces greater leeway when dealing with protesters.
Among other measures, law enforcement can now take direct action in response to protests without the need for exhaustive dialogue, as previously required by the regulation. Several human rights organizations have expressed concern about the decree, stating that it could increase the risk of abuses and reduce mediation as the primary course of action, which already was barely used. During the 2021 national strike in Colombia, 46 people were killed in the context of the heavy police repression of the strike.
One of the people attending the demonstrations last week was former President Gustavo Petro, who optimistically stated that the protests reflect a popular response to the executive branch’s decisions: “The people can organize themselves, and two months into the start of a tyrannical and imposed government, this is the best wake-up call. The time has come for a Latin American day of popular mobilization.”
Petro, who has just resumed leadership of the Pacto Histórico – a coalition of movements that supported his political project – also said: “This is how we respond to adversity with dignity, with the determination to win again, without fear. Life is our companion, not death. The people won’t give up, damn it.”
At least eight Palestinians, including four children, were killed in Israeli assaults in different parts of the Gaza Strip over the last two days.
On Monday, October 19, Israeli forces launched drone strikes on north-central Gaza City and the southern city of Khan Younis, killing a Palestinian man and two children.
One day earlier, five Palestinians were killed and several others were injured in Israeli shelling and gunfire across the besieged enclave. This includes two children, who were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in separate attacks.
One of the slain children was identified as 13-year-old Tamer Soboh, who was killed in the northern city of Beit Lahia; the other was Misk al-Dalu, who died after Israeli troops opened fire at tents sheltering displaced people in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
Mass funerals continue as more people are recovered from beneath the rubble
Meanwhile, mass funerals remain common across Gaza as Palestinians dig through the rubble to recover the remains of their loved ones.
On Sunday, the remains of 75 Palestinians were buried in the Sheikh Radwan Cemetery in Gaza city, the majority of whom were children and women killed in Israeli airstrikes that targeted their homes during the three-year genocide.
WFP cuts aid to half a million Palestinians in Gaza
While mass killings are underway in the war-ravaged territory, the humanitarian crisis further deteriorates not only because of Israel’s continued blockade and restrictions on the entry of goods and supplies, but also because of measures taken by some organizations concerned with providing aid to the population.
On Monday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) announced that it will reduce food assistance in Gaza by around one-third due to shortage of funding. This means that 500,000 people will lose access to critical assistance.
It is worth noting that since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, the WFP provided food assistance for up to 90% of families in the Gaza Strip.
Mass mobilizations against austerity policies and their effects are not winding down in France. On Saturday, October 17, roughly 800,000 people joined protests across more than 1,700 assembly points, according to union figures – amplifying demands tabled over a month of student protests and demanding urgent action on the cost of living crisis.
In the aftermath of the protests, the government expanded local authorities’ powers to introduce curfews. This led to overnight movement limitation orders introduced in several cities, including central parts of Paris, Lille, Lyon, and Nice. Many of the curfews target young people in particular, reflecting institutional concern about the success of their recent mobilizations.
Over the past weeks, students launched a wave of school strikes and occupations, resisting the erosion of education services under successive neoliberal governments. Their movement drew support from trade unions and progressive political forces, who joined students on the streets to pressure the Lecornu administration to change course and prioritize public services and labor rights over armament.
Rallies and marches reinforced the student movement’s demands for accessible, equitable higher education, alongside trade unions’ calls for higher wages.
They also drew links to other historic moments of mobilization, including the struggle for Algeria’s liberation. Many groups taking part echoed the anniversary of the 1961 demonstration that ended in the massacre of hundreds of people protesting for independence.
Police violence continues
Teachers, families, and elected officials also joined, for a practical reason: to shield students from the law enforcement violence unleashed on their mobilization.
Saturday’s protests were again met with police violence, with officers relying – unsuccessfully – on tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds. Serious injuries and cases of severe police brutality were reported throughout the day.
After repeated repression, and with neither the government nor President Emmanuel Macron offering credible solutions to protesters’ grievances, protests turned into riots. While those close to social movements emphasized the events were triggered by years of cuts and unimpeded attacks on workers’ rights, the middle and upper classes were indignant.
Recent protests in France have a decisively antifascist character. Protester’s sign reads: “Always angry, never fascist.” Source: Manon Aubry/Facebook
Macron channeled their reaction in his post-protest speech. He declared those responsible for the looting must be punished, while promising more “dialogue” and offering a mild acknowledgment of people’s concerns over fuel, food, and other essentials.
“There are people out there who rightfully feel that the price of fuel is too high,” the president said – before shifting responsibility elsewhere. He said rising prices were the result “of what is happening in the Persian Gulf – a war that France was not part of.”
The speech landed poorly at home and abroad. The Iranian government, for one, has repeatedly called out Macron for applying double standards between protests in West Asia and France, emphasizing that the French president had expressed support for US plans in Iran and that ongoing mobilizations were a logical outcome of the policies he endorsed.
Students reject Macron’s response
In France, protesters called out Macron for failing – yet again – to identify a concrete way out of the situation facing the country.
“Since the beginning of this movement, high school and university students have been met with nothing but contempt and police batons in response to their demands,” the university students’ union Union Étudiante wrote. “Yet we have put forward a clear set of demands, widely supported by everyone who took to the streets on October 17.”
“He did not utter a single word about the high school and university students maimed in the crackdown,” the organization added. “He said nothing at all about the real violence committed on Saturday,” referring to approximately 2,300 arrests made on that day alone – and dozens of young people who were seriously injured over the past weeks.
“It is not a matter of engaging in endless dialogue, but of responding concretely to the needs of high school and university students: income, housing, food services, healthcare, study conditions, access to degrees, and an end to repression.”
Lecornu attempts to blame left for chaos
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s reaction to the protests drew an equally negative response from progressive forces, especially after he suggested left movements were responsible for chaos and violence.
“What a pathetic politician,” wrote presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “He is responsible for the chaos – chaos he methodically prepared, whether through sheer incompetence or a deliberate ‘strategy of the worst’ aimed at conjuring up a ‘party of order’ that would make people forget his failure on the public finances.”
Calls for justice and for the reopening of Nolan Wells’ case are mounting after a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges, despite the question of Wells’ cause of death remaining unanswered.
Wells, a young Black student at Southwest Mississippi Community College, went on a boating trip on July 4 to Horn Island, just off the coast of Mississippi, with several white friends. He never returned.
His friends, who returned to the mainland with Wells’ cell phone but without him, claimed he chose to stay behind. Wells’ body was found in the water near Horn Island two days later.
A state medical examiner declared the 18-year-old’s cause of death “undetermined.” The grand jury, however, claimed that the conditions of his death were “consistent with drowning.” When the autopsy reports were publicly released after the grand jury decision, they revealed that there were two contusions on the back of Wells’ head. The family’s attorney and others have described these injuries as blunt-force trauma, insisting that they do not believe Nolan drowned.
The autopsy also reported a lack of fluid or debris in his airways, and that his stomach was empty.
The suspicion and confusion surrounding his death has only been amplified by recently released text messages between various friends of Wells.
Newly released messages between Wells’ friends fuel suspicions and calls for justice
A 292-page report of cell phone messages between Nolan Wells’ friends was released on October 15. In one group chat, the friends that returned to the mainland without Wells appear to be discussing the investigation by authorities.
“Don’t speculate about s— yall.” “Because they can try to get your a–.” “If you talk more,” said one user.
As information about the case became public, sparking calls for answers about Wells’ death, the messages appear to express frustration at the increasing suspicion toward this friend group.
One user said, “small minded individuals who are so full of hate towards themselves that they can’t help but try and push it onto other people.”
Another said, “lay low” “and pray I love yall but we don’t needa be texting ab this.”
In a different groupchat, presumably of several Black friends of Wells, users expressed suspicion toward the group of white friends that came back from Horn Island without Nolan.
“Ts weird af,” said one friend.
“Dem white n—- mane.”
“They did sum wit bra,” said another.
“i lowkey feel like they drugged his ahh assum icl,” said one friend.
“All them white —— was lying ——- was crying otw last night while we was just asking questions,” said another user.
“wtf,” responded another.
Returning to the majority-white group chat of friends that were with Wells on July 4, one user said:
“We need to go to Nolan’s funeral and get with all our other black friends to prove a statement for the media.”
“It would shut everyone down.”
The conversation then turned toward the Wells’ family attorney, Ben Crump, and the Wells’ funeral.
“Whoever paid for the funeral wants it to be some huge thing,” said one friend.
“it’s almost like their brainwashing Nolan’s parents and taking advantage of them while their overwhelmed with grief.” “it’s so evil.”
The group continued to exchange messages expressing frustration at what they described as “racism” being directed towards them by the public as questions around Wells’ death mounted.
An online fundraiser was reportedly set up on behalf of Wells’ white friends, titled “Stand With Nolan Wells’ Targeted Friends,” and included messages like, “Thank you for Standing with The Boys!” The fundraiser received over two hundred thousand dollars to “prosecute cases of defamation” so that “these Boys” can win lawsuits against “fanatical opponents who have unlimited resources.”
As more information comes out about the case, the unanswered questions are boiling over into anger and demands for accountability. A spontaneous movement is now demanding Wells’ case be reopened and investigated thoroughly until justice is served.
Movement for Nolan Wells surges across HBCUs
Following the grand jury decision, spontaneous student walkouts were seen across dozens of historically Black colleges and universities across the South.
“It was clear to us living here seeing the rage around the Nolan Wells case start to come to a boil,” said North Carolina-based organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation Prince Williams, speaking to BreakThrough News.
There was a walkout at Atlanta University Center on October 1, another at North Carolina Central October 6, and Prairie View A&M University on October 7.
After these spontaneous walkouts, students at Jackson State University called a Southern Day of Action on October 15, demanding justice for Nolan Wells. Specifically, they called for the investigation into the death of Nolan Wells to be reopened immediately.
“The call spread like wildfire, especially in North Carolina,” said Williams. “Six schools called walkouts and demonstrations.”
In total, about a dozen schools across five states in the South answered the call from students in Jackson, he said.
From an institutional perspective, the case is a settled matter after the grand jury decision. But organizers on the ground say the institutional legacy of racism, white supremacy, and Jim Crow, have not been forgotten. And neither has the historical tradition of Black resistance.
Generations of resistance in the US South
“There has never been a moment in the history of the US where Black Americans could rely on the government to get justice for us,” said Williams.
Instead, he pointed to the countless ancestors who, through relentless struggle, freed themselves from slavery and broke the back of Jim Crow.
“That reality has created a generational responsibility for us to see our own power when we come together on one accord to find justice for ourselves.”
As suspicious deaths of young Black Americans are on the rise, Williams says there is little trust in law enforcement. “About 7 in 10 Black adults say prisons, policing, and the court system were designed to hold Black people back.” The recognition of a highly racist system enforced by these very institutions is widespread, he added. The suspicious deaths we are seeing today are a continuation of a long history, especially in Mississippi, where kidnappings of Black people are “written off as disappearances” and lynchings are ruled “accidental drownings.”
“We must stay vigilant and continue to raise this case in our daily lives with everyone we know.”
National solidarity in the call for justice for Nolan Wells
Organizers urge all students and communities across the United States to support the campaign for justice and accountability.
“Put pressure on local, state, and federal officials to reopen Wells’ case,” said Williams. However, he emphasized that this can’t be done effectively in isolation.
“We need to join organizations of like-minded people that are sustaining these campaigns who can take this movement far beyond the Southern day of Action on October 15.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reiterated that his country’s proposal to end the war with the US and to restart nuclear negotiations is “still on the table,” claiming the Iranian conditions are “completely clear” and “unchanging.”
Talking to Iranian state media on the sidelines of the 52nd session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Baghdad on Sunday, October 18, Araghchi also said that Iran is currently studying the US response to its proposals.
If the US meets its conditions, “the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened on the sixth day, and negotiations will resume on the seventh,” Araghchi said.
Though Araghchi did not talk about them explicitly, he reiterated that the Iranian conditions are the same as what the US had agreed to under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed in June.
On several previous occasions Iran has made clear that if the US lifts its naval blockade, releases Iran’s foreign frozen assets, and ends the war on all fronts in the region, it will allow the Strait of Hormuz to open.
As per the MoU, in the first 60 days after the deal took effect both sides were to initiate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. However, the MoU expired in August after hostilities were resumed within weeks of its signing.
The US resumed its military strikes on Iran in July, leading the Iranians to reimpose their blockade in the Strait of Hormuz in response, reversing its decision to open it for navigation as per the MoU.
Tehran had claimed that it presented a plan to reopen the Strait to the US in September, in a brief meeting with its delegation during the annual session of the UN General Assembly. However, US President Donald Trump later declared he had rejected the Iranian proposals.
Beware of Israeli provocations
Araghchi also rejected the repeated threats of new strikes and economic isolation against his country, claiming that Iran will not bow to threats and will defend its strategic and economic interests.
Last week it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a tough election at home, apart from planning to escalate war against Palestinians in the West Bank, also pressured Trump to resume the military strikes on Iran.
On the same day, Trump claimed that the US may attack some specific targets in Iran in order to disrupt its nuclear program. Media reports also claimed that the US is preparing to use the so-called “mother of all bombs” to again target Iran’s energy and nuclear infrastructure.
This is despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly boasted about “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program during the joint US and Israeli airstrikes in June 2025.
Reacting to those reports, Araghchi warned both the US and Israel to learn from their mistakes and stay away from Iran to avoid consequences more severe than during the earlier wars.
“Last time you wanted to “finish the job” Iran emerged even stronger. Want to try your luck again? Be our guest. But be careful; we have unfinished jobs too,” Araghchi said in a post on X on Monday.
He claimed that Netanyahu is pressing for a fresh war simply because he wants to stay in power and out of jail over corruption charges he has been facing for years now, without thinking about consequences to Israel or the US.
In a similar reaction, the head of the Iranian armed forces Ali Abdollahi also claimed on Sunday that his country was waiting for their [the US and Israel’s] foolish decision and miscalculation. Any attack by them would invite “a response war more severe, distinct, and devastating than in the past,” Abdollahi claimed.
Abdollahi’s warnings were relayed by several other Iranian officials on Sunday.
It is reported that the US has spent billions of dollars in the last eight months of war on Iran. It has lost most of its military infrastructure in the Gulf countries in Iranian responses, with over a dozen of its soldiers killed and several dozen of its aircraft lost. The US also faced a severe shortage of crucial ammunition due to the war on Iran, forcing it to suspend the strikes midway.
60,000 security personnel were deployed across India’s national capital on October 10. This included the police of Delhi and neighboring states, as well as paramilitary forces pulled from regions of India affected by armed insurgencies.
They sealed off central Delhi to stop protesters opposing the mass disenfranchisement of 130 million voters from reaching Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site on Parliament Street.
The railways cancelled over 250 trains to Delhi. “So far as I remember, it has never happened in the history of Indian Railways that so many trains were cancelled just because of a protest or agitation,” said Shiv Gopal Mishra, general secretary of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (AIRF).
Scores of activists already travelling to the national capital from other states of India were detained on moving trains and forced to alight at numerous railway stations in multiple states. Many grassroots activists in several other states were placed under preventive detention in their homes ahead of the protest. Paramilitary forces were deployed at checkpoints on Delhi’s borders, where vehicles were searched for any signs of protesters, placards, etc.
Within the national capital, 45 metro train stations were closed. Internet and telecommunications were down in the four-kilometer radius of Jantar Mantar. Around Parliament Street alone, where Jantar Mantar is located, over 3,000 security personnel were deployed, with multi-layer barricades, each manned by about a hundred.
Evading this anticipated hurdle, hundreds of activists from the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) had already positioned themselves the previous night just over three kilometers northeast of Jantar Mantar at HKS Surjeet Bhavan.
A memorial to the freedom fighter and veteran communist leader, HKS Surjeet, it serves as an education center of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPIM] and also hosts SFI’s Central Committee office.
The Delhi Police's midnight attempt to intimidate students at the SFI Central Committee office in HKS Surjeet Bhawan was promptly rebuffed by the CPI(M) party leaders there. pic.twitter.com/x45gOglsCk
“But the police knew we were there,” recalled SFI activist Asikul. The police had tried over the last two nights to enter the premises to take stock of the preparations, but were stopped. Activists worried the police could barricade the gates and stop this mobilization of hundreds from stepping out to protest the following morning.
Quietly, after midnight, student activists slipped out of HKS Surjeet Bhavan in groups of five, one after another, with cover stories for travel reasons if intercepted on the way. By six in the morning, about 250 of them had relocated to the CPIM’s national headquarters, AKG Bhavan, to the west of Jantar Mantar.
Back at HKS Surjeet Bhavan, where hundreds more stayed behind, barricading began between 10 and 10:30 am, just 100 meters from its gate, recalled Aman Saini, the Delhi State Secretary of the DYFI.
About 300-350 activists stormed out of the gates and made it through before the barricades could cut them off. Waving red flags and holding placards calling for the dismissal and arrest of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, they marched barely a kilometer before facing a police cordon. The police lined up shoulder to shoulder, batons held horizontal to block the protesters’ way forward.
Continuing to march, the protesters headed straight into the cordon. A tussle ensued amid chorus chants of ‘vote chor, gaddi chhod’, demanding the “vote thief” CEC’s resignation. As the protesters in the front line grappled with the police – each engaging multiple officers by dropping to the ground and resisting detention – others broke through the cordon and sprinted ahead.
Barely 300 meters ahead, a line of barricades blocked the road. Protesters stormed ahead and engaged the police. Slipping through the tussle, “I pulled the barricade from below and shoved its top. Thaad! – it fell over,” explained Aman.
Wrangling themselves free from the security personnel, many more dashed ahead, several slashing their feet against the metal of the fallen barricade, only to turn left on Minto Road and drop another barricade.
They had covered nearly half the distance to Jantar Mantar, reaching within 150 meters of the Connaught outer circle, one curve away from Parliament Street hosting the protest site.
“But the barricade there was re-enforced. We had almost managed to pull one down when the police charged at us with batons,” added Aman. Having lost numbers at each of the previous barricades, “we were only about 50 left. So they managed to detain us and shove us into buses. At least six of us were injured.”
Those who had evaded detention at the previous barricades, but were unable to push ahead, regrouped outside HKS Surjeet Bhavan and started sloganeering. Police, accompanied by paramilitary, charged with batons and detained them, and even allegedly tried to break into the premises, but were held back at its gate.
Paramilitary at the party gates
The contingent of activists who had relocated to AKG Bhavan under the cover of darkness did not have it any easier. They had only managed to stretch the security personnel and their barricades across two fronts. A paramilitary force began assembling outside its gates around 10 am, roughly the same time as the barricading began at HKS.
Several members of CPIM’s Central Committee (CC) and Politburo, including current and former Members of Parliament, many of them grey-haired, were staying at the AKG Bhavan for a CC meeting. They joined the students as they marched out.
“Some 20 people were detained right outside the gate – almost the whole frontline. The rest of us behind them pushed through. We kept running,” recalled Asikul.
About 15-20 minutes into the march, SFI activist Noel was detained. “I was not taken to a detention bus, where others were held. I was held alone in a bus used to transport the police. There I was beaten for two hours,” he said, sharing pictures of the injuries he sustained on his face.
“Two of my comrades realized that I was being held alone. So they intentionally got themselves detained near my bus and joined me. They also got beaten up,” he added. Later, when the police started marching them to the detention bus, allegedly prodding them forward by jabbing the blunt ends of their batons into their backs, “we managed to escape.”
Meanwhile, others had pushed ahead. Among them were SFI National Joint Secretary Aishe Ghosh and the DYFI’s national president, AA Rahim. They marched about a kilometer from AKG Bhavan before being apprehended at the roundabout near Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. The SFI alleged that “Aishe Ghosh was assaulted by male police personnel in the absence of women officers.”
A showdown ensued. Dropping to the road and bracing in a huddle, Aishe and other female activists held ground as female police personnel who arrived later grappled with them, eventually dragging them away to detention buses, about 1.5 km away from Jantar Mantar.
Other activists, including Asikul, had strode ahead, breaking through three barricades, and reaching within 400 meters of Jantar Mantar. “We were not able to break through the fourth. We were only about 35 left,” said Asikul.
“Using chokeholds and baton charges, they detained us. Some managed to escape detention by breaking out through a bus window,” an increasingly popular mode of resistance by the younger generation of activists, determined to make detentions as costly and as strenuous as possible.
Police detaining student activist and SFI president Adarsh M Saji. Photo: CPIM
Detention at the stadiums
Asikul and the rest of the detainees were driven almost 50 km to Bawana in northwest Delhi and held at the Rajiv Gandhi stadium, where hundreds more were already being held. Among them was 77-year-old Manik Sarkar, a senior communist leader and Tripura state Chief Minister from 1998 to 2018. He was accompanied by the northeastern state’s current opposition leader, Jitendra Chaudhury. Veteran trade unionist and former Member of Parliament (MP) Tapan Sen, along with other ex-legislators, were also held there.
“There was not a drop of water in any tap in the toilet. We were not even provided with clean water to drink. When we demanded, we were asked to drink from” an old, ill-maintained leaky tank in the premises, said SFI activist Utkarsh, who was also held here. “We challenged the police to drink that water. They refused.”
When detainees began falling sick, Utkarsh and other activists warned the senior police officer in charge of this detention of consequences for mistreating a former Chief Minister and ex-MPs. They reminded him of his responsibility if one of these elderly political leaders fell seriously ill. Only then did the police “finally provide us with water and some snacks.”
Seven other stadiums in the city, along with several other public facilities, were reportedly turned into detention centers that day, when security personnel detained over 7,000 people from the streets of the national capital, including protesters, journalists and even pedestrians suspected of being protesters.
More than 7 km south of Jantar Mantar, near the INA market, outside barricaded central Delhi, police detained protesting activists of the All India Students’ Association (AISA), led by Neha Bora, one of the most recognizable faces of the protest movement.
Detentions were also reported in Raj Ghat, about 4.5 km northeast of Jantar Mantar, where the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of India (RWPI) and its affiliated mass organizations had organized a protest.
At the airport, almost 15 km to the southwest of Jantar Mantar, the police boarded a plane as soon as it landed from Mumbai – even before the passengers could disembark – to detain Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das, and Ashutosh Ranka from their seats. They are the top leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).
“Cockroaches”
The pressure group started as a satirical protest on social media in May, after the Chief Justice of India said: “There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment or have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists.”
The CJP has since become a material force, playing a key role in the protest against exam paper leaks that forced the Union Education Minister to resign in July.
About two months after his resignation, an investigation by the Indian Express newspaper exposed irregularities in the conduct of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar. Several times, his two fellow election commissioners had flagged their concerns about his potentially illegal and unconstitutional decisions.
These pertained to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, still underway after already deleting the names of 130 million people from India’s voter rolls – in an unprecedented shrinking of India’s electorate. Opposition parties have long alleged that this exercise is meant to help the ruling far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, consolidate its hold on power.
Earlier this month, on the birth anniversary of Gandhi on October 2, protests began, calling for the scrapping of the SIR and the CEC’s resignation. On October 7, the CJP called on youngsters to take Jantar Mantar again on October 10.
In response to its call, thousands of youngsters, most in their late teens and early 20s, kept arriving in small groups to central Delhi throughout the day, only to be whisked away by the police.
Detention as deterrence
“These youngsters, who were not part of any cadre-based organization, were particularly harassed by police because they identified them as vulnerable. They were threatened, their phones and keys were snatched,” said DYFI’s Delhi State Vice President, Rikta Krishnaswamy, who was held with hundreds of them at a makeshift detention center in Jafar Kalan, over 45 km west of Jantar Mantar.
Bundled into a bus at the final barricade reached by the march from HKS Bhavan that morning, Rikta was brought here by midday, when “the electrician was still installing the fan. We were held until evening with nothing to eat – not even a cup of tea. The police are trying to make detention as much of a deterrent as possible.”
But the protesters were not deterred. The very next day, DYFI activists, including several central committee members, gathered at Connaught Place, a 15-minute walk from Jantar Mantar, which remained cordoned off, even as the overall restrictions on movement in central Delhi had eased.
Custodial torture, sexual harassment
Soon after they began staging a protest, security personnel swarmed in. The detained protesters “were not taken to any police station,” according to a petition alleging custodial torture, filed in the Supreme Court by AA Rahim, the youth organization’s national president and an MP.
“Instead, while still near Connaught Place, the bus was driven to a closed and heavily guarded space in front of the Daryaganj restaurant, away from public view, out of the reach of the media and without any CCTV cameras. There, the detainees were sorted according to gender and then forcibly shifted into a specialized police van divided into five separate cells.”
These vehicles “functioned as unrecorded, mobile places of detention, wholly outside the safeguards of the Constitution,” added the petition. “Inside the cells of the van, the detainees were beaten on the face, kicked on the backbone with boots and struck on the head. Several of the personnel wore no name badges.”
At a press conference on October 12, women activists of the SFI showed bruises and alleged sexual harassment by security personnel.
But even the alleged custodial torture and sexual harassment has not deterred the protests, which are widening, drawing in more sections of society into the agitation.
Farmers and workers to join the agitation
Representatives of India’s largest and oldest farmers’ union, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), the All India Agricultural Workers’ Union (AIAWU), the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), along with SFI and DYFI leaders, met at the HKS Surjeet Bhavan on October 14.
Several public intellectuals and artists also participated in this meeting of mass and class organizations’ leaders, where they jointly formed the All India Platform of People Against SIR. This platform announced October 23 as a Nationwide Street Action Day Against SIR.
Condemning the central government’s denotification of Jantar Mantar as a designated protest site on October 12, the platform gave a slogan to turn every street and every village into Jantar Mantar.
Last week, anti-immigrant protests in South Africa turned violent, with looting, destruction of property, and reports of 24 vehicles being burnt as tensions escalated in Johannesburg and Durban. The unrest followed growing anger over a government directive on asylum applications, which the Department of Home Affairs has since withdrawn.
The directive, issued on September 28, instructed Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) to process all asylum applications immediately. Massive queues of foreign nationals subsequently formed at immigration offices, which were met with demonstrations and violence from anti-immigrant groups.
Protests were reported in Soweto township, Johannesburg, and Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal province. Demonstrations in Durban continued for a second day, prompting police to strengthen their presence to contain the unrest. However, tensions remained high in the city and in the country.
Government withdraws asylum directive
On October 9, the director-general of the Department of Home Affairs announced the withdrawal of the directive concerning the intake of asylum applications.
The directive had been introduced following a July 7, 2026 Constitutional Court judgment that mandated that individuals could not be barred from accessing South Africa’s asylum system, even if they entered the country irregularly. According to the department, the September directive intended to guide Refugee Reception Offices in implementing the court’s order.
The department said the directive had been issued as an operational measure without the knowledge or involvement of the Minister of Home Affairs or other political office-bearers. It rejected claims that the measure had been politically motivated.
However, the department acknowledged that implementing the judgment had produced consequences that were not anticipated in the court order. These included overcrowding at Refugee Reception Offices within days of the directive’s introduction, risks to the safety of Home Affairs officials and emerging threats to public order.
The director-general said the department would begin a fresh process to determine a more appropriate and sustainable way of complying with the court order, while reaffirming its commitment to the rule of law and the authority of the judiciary.
Home Affairs warns of disinformation
Two days before withdrawing the directive, the Department of Home Affairs issued a statement on October 7 warning of what it described as a coordinated disinformation campaign surrounding the Constitutional Court judgment.
The department said false claims had circulated suggesting that the Minister of Home Affairs or political parties had independently decided to suspend certain asylum procedures. It insisted that the operational directive had been issued to implement a binding court judgment.
The department also rejected claims that the ruling granted citizenship to asylum seekers or automatically legalized all foreign nationals living in the country.
It warned that misinformation intended to inflame tensions and incite violence threatens public stability, urging South Africans to verify information before sharing it.
The subsequent withdrawal of the directive, however, does not reverse the Constitutional Court’s judgment. Home Affairs has said it will develop a new operational approach that complies with the ruling while addressing the challenges faced by refugee reception offices.
Anti-immigrant tensions continue to escalate
Last week’s violence is the latest in a wave of anti-immigrant and xenophobic mobilization that has built steadily since the start of the year. Protests broke out across Johannesburg, Durban and Pretoria in April, and anti-immigrant groups, led by the March and March movement, set June 30 as a deadline for undocumented migrants to leave the country.
On that day, police arrested hundreds during nationwide marches, and one person was shot dead in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township as residents looted spaza shops owned by foreign nationals. In the following weeks, protesters in Johannesburg went door to door, seizing foreigners from their homes, with many fleeing for safety.
As Brazil heads into the October 25 runoff election between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Flávio Bolsonaro, the country stands as a crucial battleground in Washington’s strategy to contain China, as well as global geopolitics.
What does this election mean for the future of China-Brazil ties, the BRICS alliance, and independent technological sovereignty across the Global South?
Tings Chak – researcher, writer, and art director for the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research – joins Amanda Yee to break down the two competing paths for Brazil represented by Lula and Bolsonaro.
When Dana Joudeh, 35, went into labor in mid-September, she was six months pregnant and being held at Israel’s Damon Prison. Her daughter, Lia, was born premature, and her family says she gave birth shackled to a bed, with a rifle pointed at her.
Joudeh spent almost her entire pregnancy in Damon prison, held under a six-month administrative detention order. There she endured the conditions Palestinian prisoners have described since October 2023: medical neglect, inadequate healthcare, food deprivation, and sharp cuts to hygiene supplies.
A day after giving birth, Dana and Lia were released from Damon Prison. Their time in detention exposed blatant Israeli violations, not only against women but even against infants.
BreakThrough News spoke to Maram Joudeh, Dana’s sister, to learn more about the circumstances of her sister’s arrest, conditions of detention, and how she gave birth amid it all.
The circumstances of her arrest
Dana’s ordeal began when Israeli forces raided her family’s home in Iraq al-Tayeh village, east of the northern West Bank governorate of Nablus and arrested her during Ramadan 2026 (between February and March). Dana was still living with her family at the time before getting married a couple of weeks later.
According to her sister, Dana was detained and interrogated for one day. She was released after losing consciousness due to complications from a medical procedure she had undergone shortly before her arrest.
Around mid-April, an Israeli commander contacted Dana, asking her to head to the Huwara Detention Center for another interrogation session.
Although Dana had never been involved in any political activity, she felt intimidated by the phone call and did not go, especially as the Israeli commander, who was speaking to her, asked her about her recent marriage.
A few days later she received a couple of other phone calls. During one of the calls, the commander informed her that he knows that the wedding of one of her sisters would be held within days, so Dana avoided attending the wedding fearing that the Israeli forces would storm the ballroom and arrest her from there.
In another phone call, she was threatened that if she did not come to the interrogation, her father would be arrested. Therefore, Dana’s father decided to go to the Huwara Detention Center instead of her, but the Israeli commander insisted that she should come personally.
As a result, Dana went to the interrogation on April 19, hoping that she would spend hours there then be released, but she was transferred from there to Hasharon prison, where she spent one night that she described as a “nightmare”.
“The toilet had a stall door that did not provide any privacy. It was very dirty. I lost consciousness there, so they transferred me to a hospital, blindfolded, and shackled. They conducted a pregnancy test for me, and sent me to Damon Prison from there,” Dana told her lawyer, who managed to visit her in Damon Prison in early May.
It was then that Dana’s lawyer found out about her pregnancy, and the inhumane detention conditions she had endured since being imprisoned.
Six months of pregnancy amid inhumane detention conditions
For six months, Dana was detained with five other female prisoners in a small cell, which should be allocated for two individuals only.
“There are only two metal bunks. The toilet has no door, and there is a lot of humidity as they do not open the vision panel.” Dana told the lawyer, describing the cell.
Dana also informed her lawyer that, despite her pregnancy, she was provided with a minimal amount of food, and that she lost weight and suffered from dehydration.
She added that only she and Amina Taweel, another pregnant prisoner, were sleeping on the bunks; the remaining four female prisoners were sleeping on the floor.
“Lina Naser and Tasneem Odeh used to give us their food, because they were expecting to be released soon,” Dana noted about other inmates, who shared the cell with her.
Dana said that the food was “inedible”, as they were sometimes given boiled eggs several hours after being cooked. Canned chickpeas soaked in water and lentils were among the limited options provided to them on almost a daily basis.
Dana also mentioned that their cell was violently stormed multiple times, with sound grenades being thrown. She said that sometimes they stormed the cell at midnight, when she and the other detainees were sleeping.
Whenever Dana fainted during those raids, prison security personnel dealt with the situation by asking other inmates to raise her legs and make her drink water, which she described as “undrinkable”.
During her detention, Dana also developed pimples between her fingers without knowing the diagnosis. Moreover, she wore the pajamas of Lina Naser after the latter’s release, as no other suitable clothing was available.
Shackled to the bed, Dana gave birth to Lia at gunpoint
One day before her scheduled discharge date, Dana experienced severe labor pains, despite being only six months pregnant. This occurred after she had bled for approximately 10 days in Damon Prison before the Israel Prison Service (also known as Shabas) finally approved her transfer to Rambam Hospital.
Already facing a high-risk health condition for herself and her fetus, Dana had her hands and ankles shackled to the bars of a metal bed. She was surrounded by several female Israeli soldiers, who pointed their rifles at her and shouted: “Push harder, you saboteur!”
As the delivery got obstructed, Dana underwent a caesarean section, but even during the surgery the soldiers continued to shackle her hands and legs, surrounding her and threatening her with firearms.
When Dana finally gave birth to Lia, the soldiers shouted: “Another saboteur has just been born!'”
When Dana breastfed Lia before discharge, one of her hands would remain cuffed.
One of the nurses taking care of Dana dressed Lia with pink babywear. Dana said that the nurse was Palestinian.
Nevertheless, the Shabas insisted on treating the premature baby as a prisoner. On the next day, Dana was escorted by Israeli soldiers to a bus, blindfolded and shackled, but Lia was taken away from her for hours.
She described those as the most terrifying hours, fearing what destiny lay ahead for her premature baby. To her surprise, she was then sent back to Damon prison.
Dana then realized she had been brought there because the soldiers had taken Lia to dress her in the same gray pajamas that the Israeli Prison Service (Shabas) has forced all Palestinian prisoners to wear upon release since October 7, 2023. They made customized pajamas for the 1.5 kg premature baby and took photos of her before she and her mother were released from prison, according to Maram, Dana’s sister.
Even upon her release at the checkpoint, Israeli soldiers kept their rifles pointed at Dana as she struggled to walk, carrying Lia in one arm and her belongings in the other.
“Keep walking, don’t stop. Otherwise you will be shot,” the soldiers warned her.
From the checkpoint, Dana and Lia were taken to a hospital in the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh because Dana was suffering from scabies and her baby needed to be kept in an incubator.
Dana’s scabies had gotten out of control as she was denied necessary medication while in prison. Her sister told BreakThrough News that the prison authorities only gave Dana cornstarch to apply to her skin to ease the symptoms.
When Dana left detention, she left behind two other pregnant Palestinian women in Israeli detention.
As per the latest report released by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association – shut down just a few days ago by the Israeli authorities – these pregnant women are among 90 Palestinian female prisoners currently held in Israeli prisons.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the US government is preparing to send troops to Latin America under the pretext of combating drug trafficking in the region.
According to the US publication, 600 troops from the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, NY, have already begun deploying to the jungles of Panama to conduct exercises alongside the local military.
In addition, it was reported that members of this detachment will participate in operations in other countries in the future: “The troops will eventually train with local forces in Colombia and Honduras, and could also support US Special Operations troops advising militaries conducting raids against accused drug traffickers, the officials said.”
The peoples of the region, alongside anti-imperialist and progressive forces, have long denounced decades of US military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. Various experts and analysts have shown that “war on drugs” projects have never led to the elimination of these illicit businesses. On the contrary, US military involvement has coincided with an increase in violence, drug production, but most importantly: neoliberal reforms. These reforms involve the dismantling and reduction of the state, the privatization of all possible dimensions of social life, and the destruction of social organizations that oppose neoliberalism.
Historically, this process of material dispossession has been facilitated by an expansion of US military presence, under the pretext of the “war on drugs.”
The report stated: “The deployments and growing headquarters, which have not been previously reported, along with the Pentagon’s recent movement of several MQ-9 Reaper drones from Africa to Colombia and Ecuador, mark the latest widening of the Defense Department’s fight against drug traffickers in the region.”
Shield of the Americas
For several months now, US forces have been participating in intelligence activities and supporting military operations in Ecuador, whose government has entered into agreements with the US to allegedly fight organized crime. However, it was later revealed that these operations didn’t target drug traffickers at all. In at least one instance, The New York Times reported that the US and Ecuador bombed a dairy farm.
This collaboration is part of the new military and geopolitical strategy led by the Trump administration, embodied in the agreement known as “Shield of the Americas.” In recent meetings, several governments have committed to working with the United States so that their militaries can carry out joint operations in Latin American countries.
Regarding the possible itinerary of the soldiers who are expected to arrive in Panama, The New York Times reported: “The soldiers will move first into Panama, where they will take part in jungle training exercises, officials said. From there they will head to Colombia, where they will participate in what officials have called Southern Vanguard, an exercise scheduled to begin later this month. Other rotations will move into Honduras for training with local partners. Some of the troops could be used to provide additional security for US helicopters in the region, which have been providing support for US Special Operations forces.”
For about a year now, the United States has been conducting airstrikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean that Washington claims are linked to drug trafficking. Over 200 people have been killed in the strikes and the majority of the victims appear to be fishermen from Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and other island nations. Victims’ families and survivors have vehemently denied any connection to criminal groups.
Washington claims the report is false
For its part, the US Embassy in Panama stated that The New York Times report regarding the deployment of several hundred US soldiers to the Caribbean nation is untrue: “The New York Times article alleging the deployment of 600 US soldiers to Panama is categorically false.”
The US Embassy reported that 120 US military personnel are currently participating in a training course in the Panamanian jungle, but that these troops will return to the United States on October 25 and therefore will not undertake the deployment announced by Colombia and Honduras. It did report that other US military personnel will participate in exercises in Peru.
“This is nothing new. The Jungle Operations Training Center has been operating for over a year as a school officially recognized by the US Army. US and Panamanian instructors jointly provide training in survival techniques and jungle operations,” the US Embassy in Panama said in its statement.
The controversy between The New York Times and US diplomatic officials over this report comes amid an evident increase in the US military presence in the region. In addition to operations in the Caribbean and the Pacific, there was the military incursion into Venezuela on January 3, 2026, which resulted in the capture of then-President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, as well as the deaths of more than 100 people in Venezuela. Furthermore, President Trump himself has suggested that he could attack Cuba and any other country if US security is compromised.
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