Across the world, in the face of a resurgent right wing and continuing capitalist oppression, the workers of the world are on the move. In this show, around the world, in 8 minutes, we bring you stories of struggle and resistance, stories of common people united in their rejection of this unjust system. In this episode, we look at the factory fire in Bangladesh, which killed more than 13 workers, trade unionists in the Philippines protesting human rights violation and the protests against the discriminatory citizenship law in India. Before we go to the stories for today, we take a look at the protest video from Chile. On Friday, tens of thousands of people had hit the streets against the repression by Chilean security forces. A recent United Nations report accused the security forces of committing gross human rights violations during the general strikes against the neoliberal policies of President Sebastian Panera. The report documents 113 specific cases of torture and ill-treatment, and 24 cases of sexual violence against women, men and adolescent girls and boys by the security forces. In Bangladesh, a major factory fire has swept a plastic factory in Kirani Ganj in which at least 13 workers were killed on December 11. Officials at Dhaka Medical Hospital confirmed that about 12 workers brought for the treatment died because of the injuries. One worker was declared broad dead while the other was stated to be in a critical state. The tenshed turn factory was under operation without the approval of state authorities. Initial reports say that the fire could have started because of a cylinder explosion.  In March, at least 25 people lost their lives after a commercial building was raised to the ground. Before that, in 2012, a fire raced through a garment factory in Dhaka's outskirts, killing at least 112 people. In 2010, a fire accident occurred in Old Dhaka, killing at least 123 people. Bangladesh is infamous for having one of the worst workplace safety standards. In 2013, more than 1,000 workers were killed after a garment factory producing material for many international brands collapsed in Sauer area in Dhaka. In our next story, we go to the Philippines where on December 10, thousands of Filipino trade unionists and activists mobilized in Manila on the International Day for Human Rights to call for an end to the targeting of working class and people's movement in the country. According to activists, since the government of Rodrigo Duterte came to power in 2016, the country's police and military forces have launched a deliberate campaign against trade union activists who have been victim to a series of abductions and killings. The protest that was organized by the Human Rights Organization, Carapitan, along with various other trade union organizations, was held at Livasang Bonifacio, a central plaza in the capital. Protesters condemned the red tagging of working class organizations and movements by labeling them as underground armed group fronts and demanded that the government allow the high level tripartite mission of the International Labour Organization, ILO, to visit the country and launch a probe regarding the extrajudicial killings of workers. According to reports, in the past three years, 43 workers have been killed by the police and security forces in the Philippines. The protesters also demanded the lifting of martial law in Mindanao, an island in the south of the Philippines, which has been under military rule since May 2017. In October, police forces raided a building in Bacolot city, capital of the province of Negros Occidental, where a meeting of bus transport workers union was taking place. The raids also targeted the offices of the workers group, the National Federation of Sugar Workers, NFSW, and the May 1st Labour Movement, or Kilosang Mayo UNO, KMU, along with other progressive political parties like Bayan Muna, the Gabriela Women's Party, and Garipatan, all of whom are constituents of the larger Maccabayan coalition. 52 people were arrested and charged with the possession of illegal firearms. However, according to eyewitnesses, suspected non-uniformed policemen had entered the property and planted firearms to implicate the workers. On March 30, 2019, 14 peasant activists were killed and 12 were arrested in a supposed weapons raid by the Philippines' national police and the military in the Negros province. The massacre was the deadliest act of mass murder by Filipino law enforcement agencies in recent history. The crackdown on working class struggles is part of the broader climate of government oppression against the people of the Philippines. The war on drugs launched by Duterte in 2016 has claimed the lives of more than 25,000 people, including numerous teenagers at the hands of the security forces. Duterte's rise to power was based on a promise to ensure workers' rights and an end-to-work contractualization, but once in power he completely flipped. Not only were trade union activists brutally targeted by his regime, he even shot down a bill to end contractualization. Artists and cultural workers have also been targeted by Duterte's regime. On November 30, four members of the cultural artistic collective, Pandey Signing, were arrested by police in Manila and accused of street vandalism. Pandey Signing creates street art and graffiti with the aim of exposing the crimes of the Duterte government and expressing solidarity with the people's struggle in the Philippines. The artists' arrest came soon after a march organized by various progressive organizations in the country to commemorate the 156th birth anniversary of the liberator of Philippines, Gat Andres Bonifacio. Across India, tens of thousands of people have hit the streets against the discriminatory and controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, or popularly known as the CAB, which provides citizenship based on religion. The Indian state has responded with violent repression to the protests against the recently passed law. Around four people have been killed in police firing, including a 23-year-old youngster in the northeastern state of Assam. The protests are particularly intense in the states of Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura, which lie close to Bangladesh and have historically faced an influx of migrants from across the border. Mobile Internet has been shut down and curfew has been imposed in parts of these states. In many places, military and paramilitary forces have been deployed. The Amendment to the Citizenship Act allows Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Sikhs and Christians who suffered religious persecution in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh and who have arrived in India before December 31, 2014 to apply for citizenship. Earlier, they would have been classified as illegal immigrants and barred from applying. However, Muslim refugees continue to fall under the category of illegal immigrants. Critics have pointed out that the law aims at establishing a Hindu-majoritarian country, relegating the Muslim minorities to a second-class citizen status. They have also pointed out that the ruling far-right wing Bharti Ajanta Party is using this law to mobilize the Hindu majority of the country against Muslims, branding them as outsiders. In New Delhi, massive protests against the law were held at India Gate and Jamiya Milia Islamya University. On December 13, the Delhi police unleashed brutal violence against thousands of students and teachers of Jamiya Milia Islamya, attacking them with baton and tear gas. On Friday afternoon, police launched a crackdown against the Jamiya protesters as soon as they marched out of the university campus. Some of the police personnel were seen throwing stones at the protesters. The police even entered the campus to thrash students and lobbed tear gas inside the university. According to reports, more than 50 students were detained by police and around 30 students were severely injured in the police action. One student lost part of his hand after a tear gas canister exploded near his hand. The cab is seen as supplementary to a proposed All India National Register of Citizens NRC exercise, which aims at identifying and detaining illegal immigrants. The Communist Party of India Marxist, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist Liberation, All India Forward Block and the Revolutionary Socialist Party has issued a joint statement calling the NRC CAB completely violative of the Indian Constitution and aimed at destroying the secular democratic foundations of the Indian Republic. The parties have also called for nationwide popular protests on December 19, the day when Ram Prasad Bismill, a national hero of the independent struggle, was hanged at the Gorakhpur jail in 1927. That's all we have for this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. To know more about these stories, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.


I want to take a moment right now and pray for those who are sick. Last Wednesday there was a young man, you saw him here, his name was Isaiah Williams, he's the guy who sings. He had a problem with his ears, they kept, there's kept some poppings, I guess it was popping all the time. And when we prayed for him here right before he left, he asked me to pray for his ears again and had the opportunity to place my hands on his ears and pray for him. And I'm one of those people that I love to right away follow up when we pray for people. And I followed up with him during this week three times and he sent a testimony again this morning and he's a pastor just wanted to say that God has touched my ears and all of the poppings completely gone. Amen. In this Bible it says, Surely he has bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we have seen him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our inequities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. Our healing is not something we deserve, it's something Jesus purchased with the price of great suffering. It wasn't easy, but today it could be easy to receive because a heavy price was paid. I want us to right now agree together as Christians and as believers. I want to see healings for many reasons. One of them is I want you to experience God's supernatural power on your own body. Seeing kidney stones disappear from my sister's body is something you can debate, you can have a degree in atheism, but you will never debate her out of faith in God when you have kidney stones and they disappear. Seeing people when we go to camps and seeing people's backs being healed and they say, guys, guys, you don't understand this is the first time, I've never had a miracle that happened to me, this is the first time, this is crazy, and they run out of words because it happened inside of this physical body. It's the first thing. Another reason why the Lord wants to heal is because God truly cares for us. He cares for our health and our bodies are meant to glorify him. Another reason why is he wants this to be a sign that he is alive, that the world will know God is real. Not because a preacher said so, but because you have experienced him in something supernatural that took place in Jesus' name, amen? And so in our church, we don't just want to talk about miracles, we don't just want to pray for miracles, we want to believe for miracles and act on miracles and see them happen in our lives in Jesus' name. Whatever something is great in your body or something is small, whatever it is physical or maybe emotional right now, I want us to agree. We are going to commend any demon behind the sickness to go and we're going to trust that Jesus through the Holy Spirit will touch you at the point of your need. You may say right here, right now, right here, right now. Why? Because this Bible doesn't change. You may be tired today, sick tomorrow and discouraged the day after. The Bible is the same yesterday, today and forever. It doesn't change. Jesus doesn't change and our promise in him does not change either in Jesus' name because somebody say amen.  We're going to pray together and I see a lot of people's hands go in every single place. It's okay. This is your moment. You pray. And I'm going to lead you in a simple prayer but this prayer has power because Jesus has power. I want you to say that my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Say my body is not for sickness. My body is not for pain. Say right now, I receive the promise of Jesus that in his stripes I am healed. And I command every sickness, every demon or every curse behind the sickness, I commanded be broken over my body, be broken over my body in Jesus' name. I command every pain to go, every sickness to leave, every demon to lose his grip over my body in Jesus' name. In Jesus' name, say I receive Holy Spirit's touch. I receive God's healing in my body in the name of Jesus. And some of you will feel just heat going through your body right now and it's going to be the presence of the Holy Spirit. Just raise your hand for just a few more minutes or a few more seconds right now. Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank you that you are our healer. I thank you that you're still the same God yesterday, today and forever the same. I thank you that your healing is not limited to 2,000 years ago and right now I speak your healing Father as your servant and as a person who declares your word. Let it bring healing to people's bodies. Let people walk out today without that pain. Let them sleep without the ear problems. Let them sleep without that headache. Let them sleep without that back pain.   Let it live today in Jesus' mighty name. Father we thank you for your mercy. Father we thank you for your grace and God we vow to you to give you praise.  Can somebody say amen? Amen. I'm going to ask you to do something that you may have not done before. I want you to move that very exact part of your body where you had pain. Unless you're Myra, every part of her body is in pain. But I want you to just move that part of your body where you had pain. And if you just felt that pain leave, the one thing that you must do is you always have to give glory to God. And the way you give glory to God is you say thank you Jesus. And if you notice that part of your body just twisted, move it, whatever the part that you had, just raise your hand and I just want to rejoice with you and give God glory also. Just move it right now and we're going to give Jesus all the glory. So actually I just got in a car accident two weeks ago and since then I've had like neck and like right between my shoulder blades, this pain, I actually just went to the chiropractor today and they took an x-ray of my neck and they said normally your neck is supposed to be curved when you have it straight up. But mine is curved and then it just goes straight. And I've had pain all in my neck and I couldn't move my neck like this, but right now I'm moving it and there's no pain there. Amen. Amen. My knee has been hurting and I haven't been able to get down on the ground and kneel and then get back up with ease and just now I felt a pop in my knee and it doesn't hurt anymore. Amen. Can you, okay so can you get over here, can you get on your knees and it doesn't hurt no more? No it doesn't. Come on, let's give Jesus all the glory. What are you praying for? My knee started hurting in school, it just started ringing like crazy and then I just couldn't hear. So in during prayer you were placing your hand on your ear, correct? Yeah. It just went away. Okay. I fell in volleyball yesterday and I have this big floor burn on my leg and it's been hurting really bad to the point where I can't sit down without my thigh hurting really bad.


The People's Democratic Party PDP has cautioned the all-progressive Congress APC-led federal government against harassing foreign envoys and other members of the international community by speaking out against the infringement on the rights of Nigerians by the administration of President Mohamed Ibrahim. This was contained in a statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the party Kola Olubudion. Get to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.