WORLD UNREST

What's behind the worldwide unrest?

 

Massive protests in Brazil, Egypt, Lybia, Palestine, Sudan  and Turkey should jolt governments across the globe into ensuring they are providing crucial public services and opportunities to their citizens, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview on Friday.

Frustration with the political establishment, a lack of opportunity and unmet expectations for better living standards have helped galvanize millions of people in those countries to march in the streets and demand change.

"These social movements are not going to go away. And in my view they're simply going to grow," Kim told Reuters.

"Every country in the world has to really think hard about whether or not it's effective or not at delivering services, at whether or not people really do have a chance. Because Twitter and Facebook and social media have become incredibly powerful tools for civil society," Kim said.

The protests that have swept Brazil in recent weeks have sent shockwaves through the country's political establishment, prompting a flurry of promises to improve public services as well as concrete measures aimed at quelling the unrest.

In Turkey, unrest began at the end of May when police used force against campaigners opposed to plans to redevelop a central Istanbul park. The protest spiraled into broader demonstrations against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his government.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people marched across Egypt on Friday in what deposed President Mohamed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood movement called a "Friday of Rage" to protest against his ouster and an interim government set up to prepare for new elections

Egypt crisis: Ramadan gets off to an anxious start amid unrest

Muslim month of fasting and penitence marred by economic crisis and tension on the streets after worst bloodshed for a year.

Egypt's political crisis shows no sign of abating as the military-backed authorities move against defiant Islamist supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, and wrangling continues over a new government, casting a pall over the start of the Ramadan holiday.

Public prosecutors ordered the arrest of Mohammed Badie, the supreme guide of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, over accusations of inciting violence on Monday outside a Republican Guard headquarters, where 51 people were killed in the country's worst single incident in over a year.
Half a dozen other leaders of the Brotherhood and of the more radical Gamaa Islamiya were also summoned for questioning, reinforcing claims of a security crackdown.

Islamists and human rights watchdogs in Egypt and abroad have condemned Monday's killings as a massacre.
Cairenes said that the grim political climate, economic pressures and the bloodshed were spoiling the mood as the Muslim month of dawn-to-dusk fasting and penitence – normally an occasion for celebration – got under way. Events in Syria are another gloomy reminder of misery and bloodshed elsewhere in the region.