The Andes
Peasant strike rocks Colombia
Campesinos launched a strike across Colombia, with some 100,000 blocking highways and effectively shutting down at least half of the country's 32 departments.
Tag: land-grabbing
The Andes
Peru: peasant mine opponent wins Goldman Prize
Maxima Acuña, a campesina from Peru's Cajamarca region, was awarded a 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize for her struggle to defend her family lands from Newmont Mining.
The Andes
Paramilitary threat holds up Colombia peace talks
Havana peace talks between Colombia's government and the FARC are stalled as the government refuses to acknowledge the existence of far-right paramilitaries.
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.
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.