Word: curfews
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...Israel is using a variety of repressive measures to dampen the spirit of rebellion. With revenues from the occupied territories slashed as much as 50% by a Palestinian tax boycott, the government has begun staging "tax raids." Some 9,000 residents of Beit Sahur, near Bethlehem, were placed under curfew for a week after 300 townsfolk threw away their Israeli identity cards to protest orders to pay back taxes. When a mob stoned Israeli cars in the village of Beit Omer a few weeks ago, the authorities retaliated by refusing to issue market permits to 50 local fruit growers...
...main industry. It is peaceful by the Mekong. The water provides relief from the scorching heat of the day. Electric power is available only between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., when a few lights come on and residents gather to watch a video in a public hall. Then a curfew clamps down, and like a jungle mist, stillness descends again...
Nonetheless, some restaurants have reopened and are well attended. In the early evening, lovers meet again in the shadows of the fabled temple Wat Phnom. Then, as the curfew approaches and the lights begin to dim to half power, fewer and fewer bikes and pedicabs pass one another, quietly, like phantoms in the night. Still ill at ease, not quite believing that their suffering may be coming to an end, Phnom Penh's citizens head home quickly and, as always, silently. Without a political settlement, there is still reason to fear...
Together they set out to find the perpetrator of her rape, staying out past curfew, midnight, in hopes of shooting the military official. Vera and Torre must hide in bushes from the armored patrol cars that roam the streets with a license to kill anything that moves, and in the process they revive their relationship of years before. They also discuss the inner conflicts--Torre torn between her aristocratic heritage and her love for her people, and Vera confused between his distance from Chile and his desire to help...
...Curfew's plot skips around, it seems intentional. By making events take on an almost haphazard quality, Donoso shows that to live under a military dictatorship is to learn that death, imprisonment and torture are unregulated and arbitrary things. Though the action is somewhat difficult to follow, the novel itself is intriguing, and one can only hope that Donoso's words will inspire a new generation of Chileans to fight for the freedom and love they deserve...