Amid Aung San Suu Kyi’s triumphal tour of Asia and Europe, the world has paid little note as ceasefires have broken down between the Burmese government and ethnic guerilla armies in northern Shan state.
More than 500 Cambodian villagers marched to protest a controversial dam project up the Mekong River in Laos that they charge is under construction despite a pledge to halt progress while officials conduct a new impact study.
Under a new pact, Iran is to provide counter-narcotics aid and training to Bolivian forces. Bolivia meanwhile credits Brazilian reconnaissance drones for recent strikes against narco-traffickers in the country’s lowland east.
Islamist fighters have pushed Tuareg rebels of the MNLA out of Timbuktu and Gao. A convoy of Islamist forces is now headed for Kidal, the remaining town in Mali’s breakaway north where the MNLA maintains a foothold.
Aymara communal peasants in Bolivia’s Potosí department, seized two engineers at the local Malku Khota mining operation, to press their demand for the release of their leader Cancio Rojas, who was arrested last month.
A “humanitarian caravan” arrived in Colombia’s Cauca department, bringing aid to hundreds of campesinos who have been maintaining a protest encampment to prevent the military from establishing a new base.
The government of Peru’s President Ollanta Humala opened a new investigation into anti-mine protest leaders in Cajamarca. But protesters responded by holding a mock funeral for the president on his 50th birthday.
In a second day of mobilization, some 20,000 informal gold miners filled the streets of Puno in southern Peru, demanding that the regional government support their demands for “free sale” of gold.
Alexander Fernández and two other leaders of the Yukpa indigenous movement for land recovery in Venezuela’s Zulia state were killed by sicarios, or hired assassins. Two other Yukpa leaders were killed weeks earlier.
