CatalàEnglish Site map Back to main page

News

• Date: 14/01/2010

  Election year in Burma but little prospect of change for minorities

  

  FEATURE. Historic vote due to take place in Burma in 2010 risks being a show election legitimizing the military Junta · Fresh clashes expected between the Burmese military and the separatist Karen rebels, harshly repressed by the Government · The Junta rejects federalism or autonomy for minorities.

• Date: 13/01/2010

  Italian and Austrian dual citizenship requested by government party in South Tyrol

  NEWS IN BRIEF. The SVP has launched a signature petition campaign and held talks with an Austrian parliamentary commission.

• Date: 12/01/2010

  Cyprus runs out of chances for reunification

  Governments from the island’s Greek and Turkish areas have started the last round of talks before the presidential elections in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus · Greek Cypriots have rejected a proposal made by Turks while sensitive issues such as borders and land ownership are yet to be dealt with.

• Date: 11/01/2010

  Martinique and Guiana say no to more devolution

  

  Citizens from these two territories under French administration are in favour of keeping the status quo · They will continue to be overseas departments with a very limited degree of self-rule, as low as any other region in metropolitan France · Most local politicians were in favour of more powers, but fear of economic side-effects of autonomy prevailed.

• Date: 07/01/2010

  Mass protests in Egypt against Copt killings

  

  Police clashed in Nag Hammadi with thousands of demonstrators protesting against the killing of 7 Coptic Christians, who were shot down on the Orthodox Christmas Eve when coming out of mass · It is the severest attack in recent years · Members of the Coptic Church say they had received death threats.

• Date: 04/01/2010

  Morocco announces autonomy plan for Western Sahara

  

  The move has been announced by king Mohammed VI in the context of a general descentralisation plan for Morocco · Sahrawi top leader says Morocco’s measure is only an “escape forward” and does not concern Western Sahara.

• Date: 23/12/2009

  Pro-Kurdish deputies of banned DTP to stay in Turkish Parliament as BDP members

  

  The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), set up last May, will be the parliamentary group of the Kurdish deputies as long as independent deputy Ufuk Uras joins it · Kurds threatened to leave the parliament after the Turkish Constitutional Court shut down the DTP party and banned 37 of its members from politics.

• Date: 18/12/2009

  Aragonese and Catalan languages recognised by the assembly of Aragon

  

  The Languages Act has been approved, but keeps Spanish as the only official language while acknowledging the autonomous community’s own minoritised languages as 'original and historical' · PSOE (Spanish Labour) and CHA (Leftist Aragonese nationalists) voted in favour of it, whilst PP (conservative Spanish nationalists) and PAR (regionalists) voted against it. IU (Spanish Left) abstained · A Language Supreme Council is to advise the government on language issues.

• Date: 16/12/2009

  Catalonia votes for independence under Europe’s watching eye

  

  182,000 Catalans vote in favour of independence in a popular consultation · The polling day is attended by international observers and European mass media · It is the first wave of consultations which are to be held in the forthcoming months.

• Date: 04/12/2009

  Peoples and nations today: Western Sahara

  

  DOSSIER. The Sahrawi nation is made up only of a few hundred thousand people, 160,000 of which still live in the Tindouf refugee camps of South-West Algeria for the last 30 years, making it one of the nations in the world with the highest number of refugees. The Western Sahara conflict is still in a deadlock, and in the last years has witnessed a declining interest by the international community and Morocco’s unwillingness to reach a peaceful solution.