China Uses Hong Kong Triads In Attempt To Break Up Protests

Arrests Made In Hong Kong Demonstrations

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Hong Kong police said Saturday that they have arrested 19 people, some of whom are believed to have organized crime ties, after mobs tried to drive pro-democracy protesters from the streets where they have held a weeklong, largely peaceful demonstration.

  At least 12 people and six officers were injured during the clashes, district commander Kwok Pak-chung said at a pre-dawn press briefing. Protest leaders called off planned talks with the government on political reforms after the battles kicked off Friday afternoon in gritty, blue-collar Mong Kok, across Victoria Harbor from the activists’ main protest camp.

  Police struggled for hours to control the battles as attackers pushed, shoved and jeered the protesters. Those arrested face charges of unlawful assembly, fighting in public and assault, Kwok said, adding that eight men are believed to have backgrounds involving triads, or organized crime gangs.”

 

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Increasingly , Mexicans Are Forming Militias To Defend Themselves

The Village Warriors Of Guerrero

 

Outside the base in Ayutla September 14, 2013. Most of the group members use their own guns. 
Katie Orlinsky for Al Jazeera America

” Across Mexico, civilians like those in this southern town are taking the law into their own hands, fed up with the terror sown by organized narcotics groups. Peasants are riding shotgun in pick-up trucks. They chase SUVs with tinted windows, and lock the occupants in dank rooms.  It’s estimated nearly half of Mexico’s 31 states have seen some form of citizen militias, from up toward the border with the U.S., and down to the Pacific coast.

These uprisings are nearly all in areas of rural poverty, long neglected by a government that fails to serve justice. Corrupt and complicit authorities have enabled cartel violence that has slaughtered more than 60,000 people nationwide over the past six years. Few perpetrators have been imprisoned for the executions, rapes and kidnappings by organized crime.

The epicenter of this rogue law enforcement lies in this southern state, aptly named Guerrero, or warrior, which has had a history of resistance against outside authority for 200 years. For the past two decades, it’s also had a tradition of community policing and local justice in the indigenous mountains. The Mexican constitution allows some autonomy in these remote settlements, but what has developed over the past few months largely falls outside these populations, challenging not only the drug cartels but the federal government as well.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This Says It All

The Federalist Papers