Over a dozen exiled Tibetans have been arrested in Nepal over the past week, in a crackdown against refugees while attempting to celebrate the Buddhist religious festival of Saka Dawa in the capital Kathmandu.
Thousands of protesters again took to the streets of Morocco to push for democratic reforms despite voter approval two days earlier of a constitutional reform that curbs the near-absolute powers of King Mohammed VI.
Hundreds of debt-ridden small merchants and farmers in northern Nicaragua launched a human blockade on the main road between the Caribbean coast and the capital in Matagalpa department.
UN Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Gabriela Knau warned that a new law in El Salvador requiring its high court to issue unanimous judgments is an “attack” on judicial independence and the separation of powers.
Hundreds of Palestinian detainees at Ashkelon prison, in Israel’s south, continued their hunger strike into a second day following attacks by prison security forces, who fired tear-gas and beat detainees with batons and hoses.
A Tibetan writer was sentenced to four years in prison last month after helping edit a publication critical of Chinese policy in the restive region. The move comes amid a new wave of protests and arrests in Tbet.
The captain of The Audacity of Hope, a US boat carrying activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been jailed in Athens. John Klusmer is being charged with two felonies, including “disturbing sea traffic”
Israeli Defense Forces arrested 23 Palestinians, including two members of the Palestine National Council, in operations across the West Bank. There are 6,700 Palestinians currently held in prisons and camps in Israel and in the West Bank.
At least 24 were killed in Friday protests across Syria, as thousands again took to the streets throughout Yemen, and some 5,000 led by the families of those killed in the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Venezuela’s Telecommunications Commission has opened sanction proceedings against news channel Globovision, accused of spreading “anxiety in the population” by broadcasting images of the deadly violence at El Rodeo prison.
The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon released to Lebanese authorities an indictment with four arrest warrants of Hezbollah figures in relation to the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The Audacity of Hope, US-registered lead ship in the Gaza aid flotilla, was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard just some 20 minutes outside the port of Perama. Athens says all ships bound for Gaza will be prohibited from leaving Greek ports.
