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A March 9 Venezuelanalysis.com article reported that the previous day Venezuelan authorities had arrested two National Guard officers over an alleged plot to assassinate Hugo Chavez, the country’s socialist president. Agents from Venezuela’s Military Intelligence Directorate took retired General Ramon Guillen Davila and his son, Capitan Tomas Guillen, into custody. They will be tried for instigating rebellion.

Tens of thousands of people continue to suffer the effects of the world’s worst industrial disaster — the chemical explosion and leakage of deadly gasses in 1984 at the Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical) pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, which killed thousands of people. Survivors have launched a hunger strike to demand urgent assistance from the Madhya Pradesh government, including decent health care, uncontaminated drinking water, jobs, and pensions for those who are too ill to work. Wells in Bhopal are poisoned by toxic chemicals leaking from the abandoned factory — which Dow refuses to clean up — including agents known to cause cancer and birth defects. Survivors are also demanding reparations from the company. While the victims and their families continue to suffer, Dow corporate executives have not been brought to justice and continue to live in luxury in the US. Send a message of solidarity to the survivors at . For more information visit .

On March 16 police arrested Satur Ocampo, a member of Congress from the left-wing Bayan Muna party list. Ocampo, who had been in hiding for eight days, was taken into custody shortly after he filed a court petition to quash the arrest warrant. He faces charges of killing military spies in the ’80s, according to a March 17 Philippine Daily Inquirer report.

The Fiji Women’s Rights Movement is protesting the March 13 promulgation of the Water Authority of Fiji Bill, which according to public service and public sector interim minister Poseci Bune will provide more “effective management” of water, including “opportunities for competition in the provision of water” and facilitating the “corporatisation of the Water Authority of Fiji”. Opposition to water privatisation sprang up last July when organisations including the Fiji Human Rights Commission protested the inclusion of five major private sector figures in a nine-person committee established to prepare a charter on water and sewerage. In a March 15 statement, FWRM executive director Virisila Buadromo said that “Water is a basic human right, and we are very worried about the commercialisation of this essential resource. We are appalled that water, as essential to life as air, will be treated like a business — especially in light of clear community concerns on the issue.”

Police from the NSW anti-terrorism unit joined Victorian police to raid the homes of political activists in Sydney as part of the fallout from protests against the G20 meeting in Melbourne in November. Four men were arrested and a fifth later surrendered to police.