An international mobilization is demanding release of a Chiapas schoolteacher convicted in the killing of seven police agents. The only witness against him was the local mayor’s son, who later admitted giving false testimony in exchange for a bribe.
The body of Honduran journalist and LGBT rights activist Erick Alex Martínez Avila was found near Tegucigalpa, and another journalist, Alfredo Villatoro, was kidnapped two days later.
Peru’s military marked the 15th anniversary of a commando raid that freed 71 hostage held by leftist rebels—while controversy continues about charges that the rebels were executed after surrendering.
A new US military training center in Chile will be used for exercises “clearly oriented toward the control and repression of the civilian population,” more than 20 human rights groups say.
Chile’s Supreme Court halted construction of the Cuervo hydroelectric dam in Patagonia pending further environmental studies. Chile needs to double its generating capacity to meet requirements of a planned expansion in the mining sector.
National Police in the service of Antamina company detained 16 campesinos in Peru’s Andean region of Áncash and are holding them at a post on company lands. The arrests follow protests against the mine’s contamination of local waters.
Julia Ward Howe conceived the holiday as an anti-war statement in 1870, in response to the Franco-Prussian carnage. But the pacifists who rescue this legacy from oblivion unfortunately engage in their own historical revisionism…
The US is to resume military sales to Bahrain, suspended due to human rights concerns during last year’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, the State Department announced. Rights groups says arbitrary arrests and torture continue.
US military advisors to Yemen, pulled out last year due to human rights abuses by the crumbling regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, are set to return—as drone strikes continue on territory controlled by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
The Pentagon is this week leading “Eager Lion 2012″—the largest multinational military exercises in the history of Jordan, with maneuvers planned along the Syrian border as well as in the Gulf of Aqaba, across from Israel.
The New York/Hong Kong-based Human Rights in China reports that You Minglei, an independent activist in Nanchang, was arrested on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” after distributing leaflets.
