The International Criminal Court will analyze information regarding the Colombian army murdering civilians and disguising them as guerillas killed in combat to artificially inflate their enemy kill count.
At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured in armed clashes that erupted as police evicted landless campesinos who had invaded a privately-owned “forest reserve” in eastern Paraguay’s fertile Canindeyu region.
Paraguay’s Indigenous Affairs Department is investigating after ranchers attempted to forge the signature of Ayoreo indigenous leaders after to failing to win their consent for a new road through their already threatened territory.
Even as the imprisoned mayor of Cuzco’s Espinar province was released and entered into a dialogue with the government over the Xstrata mining project, new violence is reported from Cajamarca over the proposed Conga mega-mine.
Telma Yolanda Oqueli, leader of protest blockades at EXMINGUA gold mine near Guatemala City, was shot in the chest and gravely wounded by gunmen on a motorbike. Local residents demand their right to be consulted on the mine.
Federal agents raided New Mexico’s Ruidoso Downs racetrack in a crackdown on Zeta cartel stateside money-laundering operations. Meanwhile, narco-arson attacks hit five Mexico warehouses of US-owned junk food giant Sabritas.
Indigenous leaders loyal to Evo Morales voted to remove Adolfo Chávez as president of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB)—as CIDOB’s march in protest of a jungle highway advances on La Paz.
The Transportation Commission of Peru’s Congress approved a new road through remote jungle thought to protect isolated indigenous peoples. Madre de Dios indigenous leaders protested that they were not consulted.
The Pentagon is preparing to deploy a new generation of mini-drones with miniscule warheads that can allegedly be delivered with pinpoint accuracy. On a Pakistan visit, UN rights commissioner Navi Pillay questioned the legality of US drone strikes.
Burma declared a state of emergency in western Rakhine state following an uprising by the Muslim Rohingya people—for generations denied citizenship by both Burma and Bangladesh, each considering them “illegal” immigrants from the other.
With anger still growing in Honduras over the Miskito Coast drug raid that left four dead and villagers terrorized, the White House shows no sign of reconsidering the Central American Regional Security Initiative.
Having dismissed a case brought under CAFTA, a World Bank tribunal granted Pacific Rim Mining jurisdiction under El Salvador’s own investment law to sue the Central American republic for failure to approve a mine opposed by local campesinos.
