Growing political conflicts over development projects have prompted security forces to intervene in recent weeks in Ecuador, with military troops and campesinos in confrontations over mining and hydro concessions.
Indonesian security forces fired on an unarmed political meeting of indigenous leaders in West Papua after they issued a declaration of independence. Six people were killed, many were injured, and some 300 arrested. Six have been charged with treason.
Police fired tear gas into a crowd of several hundred protesters backing the Occupy movement who attempted to retake an encampment outside Oakland City Hall that officers had cleared 12 hours earlier using smoke grenades and arresting 75.
Peru’s National Police report the seizure of nearly a ton of cocaine, after two operations in the conflicted Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE). Last month, two soldiers were killed when Shining Path guerillas fired on an army helicopter in the VRAE.
Peru’s populist President Ollanta Humala is facing his first corruption scandal, as his vice president Omar Chehade comes under investigation for using his influence to arrange a police eviction of cooperative farmers at a disputed property outside Lima.
Swiss Federal Judicial Police detained Algeria’s former defense minister Khaled Nezzar for questioning by prosecutors on “suspicion of war crimes” carried out during the North African country’s civil war in the 1990s.
King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi and other tribal leaders in Nigeria’s Ogoniland filed suit in US court against Royal Dutch Shell, charging the oil giant polluted local groundwater with benzene at levels 900 times World Health Organization limits.
After the cross-country Eighth Indigenous March arrived in La Paz to a tumultuous welcome, President Evo Morales announced that he would alter plans for the road linking Bolivia with Brazil so that it will not pass through the TIPNIS indigenous reserve.
A ranger in Peru’s remote Manu national park was lightly wounded in a confrontation with an “uncontacted” indigenous band, which fired arrows on a patrol boat. Authorities expressed concern for the health of the isolated bands if they are contacted.
Environmentalists and Mapuche indigenous leaders rallied in Chile’s remote southern town of Curarrehue to oppose the planned Panqui hydro-electric project, which would inundate several small Mapuche communities.
Judicial authorities in Guatemala declared ex-president Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores a fugitive and ordered his arrest to face charges of genocide for massacres carried out during the country’s civil war in the 1980s.
The Federation of Workers Councils Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) local at the Taq Taq Oil Operation Company in Kurdistan have submitted a complaint against the company over working conditions and a lack of equality for Kurdish employees.
