More than 3,000 farmers and residents of four rural municipalities in Mexico’s northern state of Chihuahua clashed with Mexican National Guard troops on Feb. 4 in a protest over the federal government’s plan to divert water from a dam into the Rio… Read moreMexican farmers protest water diversion to US
Traditional rulers in Nigeria’s strife-torn north are warning that vigilante militias now forming to fight Boko Haram are a sign of a generalized social breakdown in the region. The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, told a public meeting in… Read moreVigilantism fears in Nigeria’s conflicted north
Amnesty International on Feb. 3 urged participants in an international mining conference in South Africa to address human rights violations. African Mining Indaba, a conference centered on promoting the industry on the continent, is set to run this week, but several… Read moreAfrica mining confab urged to address human rights
Six members of the Mayagna indigenous people are dead and another 10 missing following an attack by gunmen on the community of Alal, within the UN-recognized Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua’s eastern rainforest. Sebastián Lino, a member of the autonomous… Read moreIndigenous rainforest dwellers massacred in Nicaragua
Following a trial lasting years, a criminal court in Peru’s Cuzco region on Jan. 30 finally absolved 10 campesinos from Chumbivilcas province of charges related to a 2011 protest against the ANABI mineral project, which they say threatens the headwaters of the Rio Yahuarmayo (also… Read morePeru: campesino ecological defenders acquitted
Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace” plan (sic), unveiled at the White House Jan. 29 in a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, has been anointed by the media with the very Trumpian epithet “Deal of the Century”—although he appears not to have… Read morePalestinians reject ‘Swindle of the Century’
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro met in New Delhi Jan. 26, pledging a “new chapter” in cooperation between their two countries, especially naming counter-terrorism and exploitation of minerals, hydrocarbons and other natural resources. (India Today,… Read moreModi and Bolsonaro: twin threat to tribal peoples
The State Human Rights Commission (CEDH) in Mexico’s west-central state of Michoacán is exhorting authorities to intensify their search for a campesino ecologist and advocate for protection of the world-famous monarch butterfly habitat, who has “disappeared.” Homero Gómez González went… Read moreButterfly conservationist disappears in Mexico
Burma's ruling junta acknowledged that it withdrew its forces from a key city on the border with China after it was seized by an alliance of ethnic rebel armies. The fall of Laukkai is the most significant defeat the junta has suffered since the self-declared Three Brotherhood Alliance launched its offensive in northeastern Shan state in October. Days earlier, at least 150 junta soldiers fled across the border into India's Mizoram state, driven from their outposts in Burma's northwestern Chin state by the rebel Arakan Army. The soldiers turned themselves over to a detachment of India's paramilitary Assam Rifles, and had to be flown back to Burmese territory. (Map: PCL)
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) filed an application to bring proceedings against Rwanda over decades of war crimes and violence perpetrated in the DRC's east. The case filed with the International Court of Justice cites "abuses attributable to Rwanda over a period extending from 1996 to the present day," including massacres, forced displacement, and other atrocities. The case comes after years of worsening tensions, with the Congolese government repeatedly accusing Rwanda of supporting armed groups operating in the eastern DRC, particularly the M23 rebel army, which has seized large areas of territory in recent years. (Photo: ICJ)
Indian authorities have deported thousands of Bangladeshi citizens in the month since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won elections in the state of West Bengal. Shortly after taking power in West Bengal, BJP officials ordered the creation of detention centers both for undocumented Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims who are fleeing persecution in their native Burma and mistreatment in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. (Image: Sowmya Reddy)
Alarming reports that Nigeria has established "concentration camps" for the Fulani ethnic minority cast an ironic light on Nigeria's tension with the Sahel states of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to the north. These three regimes have broken from the Western imperial camp (to embrace the nascent Russian imperial camp)—but are likewise subjecting their Fulani minorities to persecution and massacre. With the recent shock rebel offensive in Mali, the "terrorist" stigma that attaches to the Fulani and Tuareg peoples across the imperial camps makes their position more precarious than ever. Meanwhile, prominent voices on the both the right and the (supposed) "left" are spreading propaganda about the struggle in West Africa that is alarmingly wrong, because it exclusively views the crisis through a campist lens. In Episode 327 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg tries to provide some clarity on these fast-escalating and grossly under-reported conflicts. (Photo: Az-Zallaqa via LWJ)
