Sri Lanka
In recent elections, the United Socialist Party (USP, CWI Sri Lanka) won its first elected position in the country, a city councilor in Eheliyagoda. They also massively improved their vote in many regions. Last fall USP presidential candidate Siritunga Jayasuriya finished third of 13 candidates. Much of the USPs support comes from the courageous work they did to help the victims of the tsunami.
Kazakhstan
On April 5, city officials and riot police arrived with bulldozers to knock down a shantytown in the Shanyrak district of Alma-Ata city to make room for shopping malls and upscale residences. Within an hour, members of the Shanyrak landless community, Socialist Resistance members (CWI Kazakhstan), and hundreds of local protesters laid down in front of the bulldozers while others attempted to pull the drivers out of the bulldozers cabs.
As a preemptive measure, police placed leading Socialist Resistance member Ainur Kurmanov under house arrest. After a four-hour standoff in Shanyrak city authorities gave up, only demolishing one home. Fifteen were arrested, many of them Socialist Resistance supporters.
That same week, four Russian Socialist Resistance members, in a peaceful protest to draw public attention to the crimes of Kazakhstan President Nazarbayevs gangster capitalist regime, were arrested outside the Kazakhstan embassy in Moscow. Nazarbayev made an uneasy diplomatic visit to Moscow the next day, unable to dodge the public fallout from the CWI’s successful international protest campaign.