South Asia
Bangladesh: deadly repression of anti-coal protest
Police opened fire on peasant protestors at the site of a coal-fired power plant project in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh, killing at least four.
Tag: land-grabbing
Central America
Honduras: another indigenous leader assassinated
Honduran activist Nelson Noe García Lainez was gunned down upon returning home following the Military Police eviction of a peasant squatter community on contested lands.
South Asia
Land-grabbing behind India’s new caste wars
Inter-caste violence and protests mount in India as corporate interests seize untitled peasant lands, increasing economic pressure on rural communities.
Central America
Guatemala: harsh terms for crimes against humanity
A retired army officer and an ex-paramilitary were sentenced to 120 years and 240 years, respectively, for sexual slavery and crimes against humanity during Guatemala's civil war.
The Andes
Colombia: court protects highlands from mining
Colombia's Constitutional Court overturned provisions of the government's new National Development Plan that allowed mining in the ecologically critical high alpine zones.
The Andes
New post-conflict ‘Plan Colombia’ foreseen
President Juan Manuel Santos meets at the White House with Barack Obama to mark 15 years since the initiation of the Plan Colombia—and discuss a "post-conflict" aid package.
Palestine
Israel to confiscate vast tract of land in Jericho
Israel is set to declare 1,500 dunams (370 acres) in the West Bank district of Jericho as "state land"—the largest such grab in two years, decried as a step towards annexation.
The Andes
Ecuador passes new agrarian reform law
Ecuador's National Assembly approved a Law on Rural Lands and Ancestral Territories—hailed as a new agrarian reform but spurned by indigenous dissidents as insufficient.
North America
Paiute land at issue in Oregon militia showdown
The take-over of federal lands in eastern Oregon by a right-wing militia builds on a rancher land-grab that began when the Paiute Indians were usurped in the 1878 Bannock War.
The Andes
Amnesty presses Colombia on indigenous rights
Amnesty International finds that Colombia's peace deal is unlikely to succeed without restitution of usurped lands—even where they have been opened to mining.
Southeast Asia
Philippines: mining link seen to paramilitary terror
Clergy and rights advocates in Mindanao see army-supported paramilitary groups behind a wave of killings of indigenous leaders opposed to gold-mining operations on traditional lands.
Central America
Nicaragua: Miskito Coast land conflict turns deadly
At least nine have been killed and 20 more wounded in an escalating land conflict on Nicaragua's Miskito Coast over the past month, with hundreds displaced.