Workers in Greece are staging a national strike today against the price hikes in energy and food items including bread demanding urgent protection of the society and a raising of the minimum wage.
A recent poll showed that 6 out of 10 workers had cut on basic food items and heating due to the price hikes.
As well as an increase in the minimum wage, public and private sector unions are demanding pay increases.
In Peru’s capital Lima there have been huge protests against rising costs of fuel, fertiliser and food. The government responded with an emergency decree suspending civil liberties and ordering people to stay within their homes for 24 hours.
Thousands defied the ban and President Pedro Castillo was forced to lift his decree.
Sri Lanka is in the grip of an economic and political crisis so deep that one former prime minister has described it as an “Arab Spring”.
The spiralling price of food, fuel and electricity last week brought huge crowds onto the streets of the capital Colombo and the central city of Kandy. Then, on Sunday, the whole of the cabinet resigned—except for the hated Rajapaksa brothers, Gotabaya and Mahinda, president and prime minister, respectively.
In Sudan, thousands took part in big demonstrations on Thursday of last week. They raged against the rising price of essentials, especially fuel. They drew on the anger and continued democracy demands after a military coup in October last year.
The grassroots Resistance Committees, which have been central to the fightback against the generals’ regime, called for barricades to block the streets. Security forces killed one protester and injured others in Wad Madani city and the capital Khartoum.
Tunisia has in recent weeks seen a shortage of staple foods, as the war in Ukraine threatens to interrupt key supplies to various Arab countries.
It has brought thousands onto the streets who are combining demands for economic security with calls to overthrow President Kais Saied’s power grab.
Saied last July sacked the government, suspended parliament and moved to rule by decree, sparking fears for democracy in the birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings.
Everywhere the rulers try to make ordinary people pay for the costs of the war in Ukraine and the madness of an economic system where wages do not keep up with prices. But the revolts will spread.
The question is when will it come to Ireland.