CounterVortex

The Andes

Colombia: massacre sparks mass displacement

A massacre that left eight campesinos dead in northeast Colombia’s Catatumbo region spurred the forced displacement of some 450 people, local authorities report. The massacre at Totumito vereda (hamlet) in Tibú, a rural municipality on the border with Venezuela, took place amid a territorial dispute between the ELN guerrillas and Los Rastrojos, a paramilitary network that largely controls the nearby border city of Cúcuta. According to the Catatumbo Campesino Association (ASCAMCAT), the Rastrojos carried out the attack after the ELN planted a banner with their logo in the vereda. More than 100 families have fled to the municipal centers of Tibú or Cúcuta, fearing another attack. Control of drug-trafficking routes over the Venezuelan border is said to be at issue in the conflict. (Photo via Colombia Reports)

Syria

Syria: controlled elections amid deepening crisis

To nobody’s surprise, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s bloc won a majority of seats in the country’s parliamentary election, dismissed as a farce by the exiled opposition. As in the presidential elections that confirmed Assad’s hold on the presidency in 1994, millions displaced by the war were not able to vote. The elections were held amid a deepening economic crisis, with the UN noting a 200% food price hike in under a year and warning of widespread hunger. Russia and China meanwhile continue to use their veto on the Security Council to block aid deliveries to opposition-held areas. (Photo: UNICEF via UN News)

Planet Watch

Global mayors envision car-free ‘new normal’

The Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force, representing cities on every continent, announced a proposal for a post-pandemic “new normal” that will de-emphasize cars and carve out more room on the streets for bicyclists. The C40 Mayors Agenda for a Green and Just Recovery seeks to create conditions that will proactively prepare cities for future pandemics, while addressing systemic injustices and keeping global warming below the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. The Agenda calls for substantial investments in affordable housing and public transportation, the permanent banning of cars from many thoroughfares, an end to public investment in and subsidies for fossil fuels, and an embrace of the “15-Minute City” paradigm now being pioneered by Paris. (Photo: JPC24M)

Syria

OPCW condemns Assad regime over chemical attacks

Member states of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted 29-1 to condemn Syria’s Bahsar Assad regime over chemical attacks on civilians in opposition-held areas. Overriding a sustained propaganda campaign by Russia, the regime and their supporters, the member states endorsed the conclusions by the OPCW Investigation & Identification Team that regime forces used sarin and chlorine in attacks on al-Lataminah, Hama governorate, in March 2017. Russia and Iran, the primary backers of the Assad regime since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, voted no, joined by China. There were nine abstentions. (Photo from April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun attack via EA Worldview)

The Andes

Colombia: campesinos massacred in Huila

A band of armed men in trucks and on motorcycles invaded two veredas (hamlets) in the rural zone of Algeciras municipality, in Colombia’s central-south department of Huila, terrorizing local residents. The armed men entered homes, menacing the families at gunpoint, before identifying one family they had apparently marked for death. Four family members were killed, and two more wounded, including an eight-year-old boy. The gunmen fled before they could be identified. However, both “dissident” elements of the FARC guerillas who remain in arms in defiance of the peace deal and right-wing paramilitary groups are active in the area. Ex-FARC combatants are being especially targetted by the paramilitaries. (Photo via El Tiempo)

Africa

Sudan reforms harsh Islamist legal code

After more than 30 years of Islamist rule, Sudan’s interim Sovereignty Council has unveiled a sweeping reform of the sharia-based legal code. The revisions aim to bring Sudan’s laws in line with the Constitutional Declaration that established the country’s transitional government a year ago, and included guarantees for basic rights and freedoms. Most significantly, the amendments abolish the crime of “apostasy”—meaning conversion from Islam, which had carried the death penalty and was widely used to target political opposition. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection)

Inner Asia

Migrants stranded on Russian-Kazakh border

Thousands of migrant workers from Uzbekistan have been stranded for weeks at the Russia-Kazakhstan border. Left without work in Russia amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they sought to make their way home by land through Kazakhstan—only to find the border closed by Kazakh authorities. The migrants have set up a makeshift camp in an open field, where they are struggling without adequate food, water or supplies in severe summer heat. (Photo: Meduza)

The Caucasus

Armenia-Azerbaijan border as regional flashpoint

Several have been killed in ongoing clashes that broke out along the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan. An Azerbaijani general is among the dead in the heaviest fighting between the two nations in years. Villages in Azerbaijan’s northern Tovuz rayon (district) have come under artillery fire by Armenian forces, causing property damage. Officials in both countries blamed each other for starting the fighting. But some see an Armenian design to involve Russia in the conflict. This time the fighting is not in the contested enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where Armenia does not have internationally recognized sovereignty. An attack there would fall outside the purview of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), of which Armenia is a member. Under Article 4 of the CSTO Charter, an attack on a member state is considered an attack against all members. (Photo: Axar.az)

New York City

Fifth Estate Live with Bill Weinberg

Portland-based musician and vlogger David Rovics interviews CounterVortex editor Bill Weinberg for Fifth Estate Live. The two discuss Weinberg’s upcoming story for the anarchist journal Fifth Estate on the “two faces of fascism” the US confronts at this moment—a Trumpian dictatorship or a post-pandemic “new normality” of complete surveillance and social control. But the moment is also pregnant with possibility, witnessing the mainstreaming of anarchist ideas such as abolishing the police. Initiatives such as cannabis legalization as a first step toward this aim are gaining ground nationally. Looking back, they draw lessons for the current revolutionary moment from the Tompkins Square Park uprising on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1980s, and the rebellion of the Zapatistas in Mexico in the 1990s—who continue to hold liberated territory in the southern state of Chiapas even today. Watch the video archive on YouTube or listen to the audio version on SoundCloud.

Africa

ISIS franchise claims attack on Nigerian military

The self-proclaimed Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) issued a statement claiming its fighters killed 40 Nigerian soldiers in an ambush along the Damboa-Maiduguri highway in northern Borno state. The statement said ISWAP fighters captured five all-terrain vehicles, weapons and ammunition, and burned an armored vehicle during the attack. The Nigerian military confirmed the attack but said only two soldiers were killed. Boko Haram has now split into two factions. One, under longtime leader Abubakar Shekau, is notorious for suicide bombings and indiscriminate killings of civilians. Shekau pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2015, but ISIS only recognizes the rival faction, which calls itself ISWAP. (Photo: Sahara Reporters)

Inner Asia

Uighurs charge China officials with ‘genocide’ at ICC

Lawyers submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), demanding that an investigation be opened into senior Chinese leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed against the Uighurs and other Turkic peoples. The complaint was filed on behalf of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement (ETNAM). China is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, but the lawyers argue that the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over these crimes because part of the criminal conduct occurred within the territory of two signatory states—Tajikistan and Cambodia. The complaint asserts that Uighur victims have been unlawfully deported to the People’s Republic of China from Tajikistan and Cambodia to face abuses including murder, unlawful imprisonment, torture, forced sterilization, and forced marriages. (Photo: ETNAM)

Syria

UN Rights Council sees Russian ‘war crimes’ in Syria

A UN Human Rights Council report concludes that air-strikes on civilian infrastructure by Syrian government and Russian forces in Idlib and Aleppo provinces amounted to war crimes. The report assessed incidents that occurred from November 1, 2019, to June 1, 2020. The Syrian government and Russian Aerospace Forces carried out both land and air attacks, which destroyed civilian infrastructure. The report documented 52 “emblematic attacks” that led to civilian casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure. These included 17 attacks on hospitals and medical facilities as well as 14 attacks on schools. (Photo via EA Worldview)