Peru’s President Ollanta Humala flew into a remote jungle military base in the Upper Huallaga Valley to announce the capture of “Comrade Artemio,” the last Shining Path commander dating back to the high noon of the insurgency 20 years ago.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed its concern over the trial of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, which involves his investigations of acts that occurred during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
Chinese authorities agreed to halt a mining project on Mount Kawagebo, which is sacred to Tibetans, after local villagers, their pleas rebuffed, pushed some $300,000 worth of mining equipment into the Salween River.
As the 30-year anniversary of the 1982 Falklands War approaches, Argentina accuses the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the islands Buenos Aires claims as the Malvinas. The UN has been called in mediate in a conflict over offshore rights.
Peru raided an illegal logging site in Manú National Park, just days after the UK-based Survival International released the first detailed photos of the “uncontacted” Mashco-Piro tribe that inhabits the Amazon rainforest reserve.
A procession of some 1,000 entered Lima after a nine-day cross-country march, holding a massive rally in Plaza San Martín to oppose the Conga mining project in Cajamarca region, and like projects across Peru’s sierras.
Indigenous leaders in Bolivia have filed a complaint with the Inter-American Human Rights Commission over a new “consultation law” they say is designed to lubricate approval of the controversial Amazon highway that has already led to violence.
Colombia’s former Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, now on the lam, was charged with conspiracy, fraud and illegal arms trafficking related to the bogus “demobilization” of non-existent FARC fighters in a “criminal enterprise.”
President Mauricio Funes named retired general Francisco Ramón Salinas as director of El Salvador’s National Civil Police, replacing former director Carlos Ascencio—removing the last high-ranking FMLN member of the public security cabinet.
Chevron and coastal communities in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state are odds on whether oil from a spill at the offshore KS Endeavor platform has affected local communities, but state authorities say they are rushing in emergency aid.
Arms sales from China and Russia are fueling human rights violations in Darfur, Amnesty International said. While the war has disappeared from headlines, some 70,000 were displaced from Darfur in 2011, in a renewed wave of ethnically targeted attacks.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated its call for international action to protect civilians in Syria, calling for Syrian officials suspected of crimes against humanity to be tried before the International Criminal Court.
