After years of delay protested by survivors groups, a court in the Indian state of Gujarat convicted 31 people of crimes committed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The guilty were convicted of murder, arson, rioting and criminal conspiracy.
Mexican Governance Secretary Francisco Blake Mora was killed when his helicopter crashed near Chalco—one week after a memorial ceremony for Juan Camilo Mouriño, his predecessor who had been killed in a plane crash three years earlier.
Bolivia and the US agreed to restore diplomatic relations, three years after President Evo Morales expelled the US ambassador. But in announcing the move, Morales emphasized that the DEA would not be allowed back in his country.
After 40 days without food, 10 prisoners in Mexico’s Chiapas state ended a hunger strike, citing the threat to their health and the lack of any response to their demands. Supporters launched a protest vigil outside one prison, and blocked a nearby highway.
Mexico’s military and police commit widespread rights violations with “near total impunity,” Human Rights Watch says, documenting of numerous cases of torture, “disappearance” and extrajudicial killings since President Calderón took office.
Niger’s military clashed with a heavily armed convoy travelling though the desert from Libya. Authorities say the convoy is made up of fleeing Qaddafi loyalists escorted by local Tuareg fighters, with arms bound for the AQIM network.
Farmers staged sit-in protests at the regional offices of lawmakers of South Korea’s ruling party, demanding no ratification of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement. Days earlier, anti-FTA protesters stormed the parliament building in Seoul.
Residents of San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Toronto-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. The struggle is documented in the new film Minas y Mentiras (“Mines and Lies”).
A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns “walk” into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush—after Republican politicians have used the scandal to attack Obama.
Some 300 light automatic rifles and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets disappeared from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; they’d been in the custody of a special operations police group.
A US Congress member is asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children during Argentina’s “dirty war” against suspected leftists.
As many as 600,000 students and their supporters marched in cities across Colombia against proposed legislation which they say will “reduce education to a commodity.”
