A 24-hour general strike in Bolivia’s opposition-controlled departments of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and Chuquisaca Aug. 19 paralyzed a large swath of the country’s east. Clashes broke out in the city of Santa Cruz, where protesters armed with sticks… Read moreBolivia: opposition strike shuts down five departments
Margarita Mbywangi, a 46-year-old Ache tribal chief who says she was captured in the jungle and sold into forced labor as a child, has been appointed Paraguay’s minister of indigenous affairs by President Fernando Lugo, who was inaugurated Aug. 15…. Read moreParaguay: former slave becomes indigenous affairs minister
Indigenous groups in Peru ended more than a week of militant protests Aug. 20 at key energy sites after lawmakers agreed to overturn a new land law issued by President Alan García, which sought to ease corporate access to communal… Read morePeru: indigenous uprising claims victory —for now
On Aug. 8 the Colombian Attorney General’s Office arrested sociologist Liliana (or Liliany) Patricia Obando Villota in Bogotá on charges of organizing events and managing money for the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). On Aug. 9 the Attorney… Read moreColombia: opposition figures targeted for supposed links to FARC
The government of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe continues to be plagued by the parapolítica (“parapolitics”) scandal, in which some 60 members of Congress have been linked to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing paramilitary group that is… Read moreColombia: revelations in “parapolitics” scandal link armed forces chief to AUC
In the early morning of Aug. 15 a group of about 40 dissident unionists occupied the Mexico City headquarters of the Union of Petroleum Workers of the Mexican Republic (STPRM) to protest the recent reelection of Carlos Romero Deschamps, who… Read moreMexico: goons break sit-in at Pemex union office
A suicide blast outside the emergency ward of a hospital crowded with Shi’ite Muslim mourners in Pakistan’s volatile northwest killed at least 27 people, including two police. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast in Dera Ismail Khan, NWFP…. Read morePakistan: more sectarian terror
At least 43 were killed and 38 wounded in a suicide attack on an Algerian gendarmerie training school at Issers, in the Kabylie region, Aug. 19. The attacker drove his explosives-packed car packed to the main entrance to the school… Read moreAlgeria: suicide bomber kills 43
A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia last week denied a request made by six ethnic Uighur Guantanamo detainees to be transferred to less restrictive facilities within the base. The petitioners argued that their solitary… Read moreFederal court denies transfer for Uighur Gitmo detainees
Turkish fighter planes again bombed PKK guerilla positions in northern Iraq Aug. 16, in what a military statement in Ankara called a “successful operation.” The raid targeted a cave in the Avasin-Basyan region, which served as a base for a… Read moreTurkey bombs Iraq —again
Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Jaber Fares Dhaher was killed and 17 people, mostly Iraqi police, were injured in a wave of bombings in Baghdad Aug. 18. The Sheikh was killed when insurgents attacked his car in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of… Read moreIraq: Shi’ite, Sunni leaders taregted in dialectic of terror
A Sudanese court Aug. 18 sentenced eight Darfur rebels to death, including the half-brother of Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Khalil Ibrahim. Abdul Aziz Ashur and others were found guilty on charges related to a May rebel attack on… Read moreSudan: Darfur rebels sentenced to death
