Unrest - June 16

Greece strikes: 'The atmosphere is toxic'
STaff, BBC news
Greek police have fired tear gas at protesters as MPs negotiate on the government's future and prepare to debate new austerity measures required for the EU and IMF bail-out.

Demonstrators around Syntagma Square in Athens have thrown yoghurt and stones at police.

Residents in Athens describe the situation on the ground and explain how the changes could affect them...
(15 June 2011)

Beijing worries as sense of injustice deepens
Rahul Jacob in Hong Kong, Financial Times
Numbers associated with China are usually big. Even so, a Beijing academic’s recent estimate of the number of “incidents” – an official euphemism for strikes, protests and riots – at 180,000 last year, double the number five years ago, is huge. It works out at 493 a day.

That might seem implausibly high even for a country of more than 1bn citizens, but not in the past few days...

(15 June 2011)

Kuwait ruler warns against unrest, security threats
Eman Goma and Firouz Sedarat, Reuters
Kuwait's emir said Wednesday the Gulf state would show "zero tolerance" to anyone threatening the OPEC oil exporter's security, after the opposition held weekly rallies demanding that the prime minister step down.

Thanks to a generous welfare system, Kuwait has avoided the mass protests that have forced out the rulers of Egypt and Tunisia.

But the Gulf Arab state has endured a long political stalemate, and opposition has built up against Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah, an influential member of the ruling family. Several hundred people have held weekly peaceful rallies to demand his resignation...
(15 June 2011)