“Violence hit the streets of Cairo today after a demonstration by 1,000 industrial workers against low pay and high living costs developed into a full-scale riot... Washington Post correspondent Michael Tingay reported from Cairo January 1.

“The central security forces arrived in truckloads to quell the rioters, who tore up paving stones and smashed windows, halting traffic and disrupting Cairo’s Liberation Square and the surrounding areas near Egypt’s Parliament building and ministries.”

Under the impact of the worldwide economic crisis, a new wave of struggles broke out in Asia in 1974. No country remained insulated, but the effects of the crisis could be seen most dramatically in the semicolonial countries. Already ground down to a subsistence level by imperialism, the workers and peasants there have been hardest hit.

For millions in Asia the spiraling inflation and developing recession meant not merely hardship but starvation. Famine on a massive scale threatens whole populations. On the Indian subcontinent hundreds are already dying each day.

Protesting the corruption of the Thieu regime, several thousand Catholics marched through the northern city of Hue on Sunday, September 8. It was the first Catholic antigovernment demonstration to be held in the former imperial capital. Police attacked the demonstrators with tear gas and clubs, confiscating anticorruption banners and dispersing the march. Hundreds of demonstrators later regrouped in a Catholic church, where a document denouncing Thieu was read.