Yves Cabannes, UN advisor on forced evictions, visited the contested Dale Farm site at Basildon in England’s Essex county, where a community of “Travellers” and Roma face imminent removal.
Isolated indigenous peoples in remote areas of Peru’s Amazon rainforest are being ‘bribed’ with painkillers and pens, as industry giants seek to open up their land to explore for gas, according to Survival International.
The international price of copper is soaring as strikes halt operations at two of the world’s largest mines, Cerro Verde in Peru and Grasberg in Indonesia—both owned by the multinational Freeport McMoRan.
Tuaregs in Mali and Niger report that their compatriots in Libya are being “hunted in the streets” and tortured. Black African residents of the town of Tawergha were forced from their homes by anti-Qaddafi forces, and have set up refugee camps near Tripoli.
US diplomatic cables from Bolivia and Peru, released by WikiLeaks, warn of an “anti-system movement” in the Andean region, with indigenous peoples moving towards “self-governance and control over land and resources.”
Protests over pollution and lack of local investment shut down the operations of Petrominerales, Colombia’s fourth largest oil producer, with residents and workers erecting roadblocks around the Corcel and Guatiquia oilfields in Meta department.
Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice condemned Jorge Noguera, ex-director of the Administrative Security Department, to 25 years for allowing paramilitary groups access to intelligence, leading to at least three assassinations of dissidents.
The US Court of Military Commission Review rule that Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul, media secretary of Osama bin Laden, was properly convicted of being a propagandist and should spend the rest of this life in prison.
Former US congressman Walter Fauntroy, recently returned from a “self-sanctioned peace mission” to Libya, claims much of the fighting attributed to the rebels was actually carried out by NATO special forces troops—who also brutalized the populace.
Leaders of 71 unions in 18 countries have called for Mexico’s federal government to take over the stalled investigation of a US union activist’s murder in 2007. Santiago Rafael Cruz was organizing migrant laborers in Monterrey when he was beaten to death.
Haitian president Michel Martelly announced the formation of an advisory council for economic development that will “remove the brakes” on foreign investment—and ensure a continued role for Bill Clinton as de facto “governor” of Haiti.
As student strikes continued, Chileans marked the Sept. 11, 1973 coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende and installed the Pinochet dictatorship. A march was held for the 3,225 known to have have been killed by the Pinochet regime.
