The Amazon
Colombia: campesinos block oil operation
Colombia's feared anti-riot force, the ESMAD, used tear-gas against campesinos occupying lands in the Amazonian department of Caquetá to block oil exploration efforts.
Tag: land
The Andes
Peru: incoming admin threatens communal lands
Peru's president-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has unveiled a platform that calls for privatizing and "individualizing" communal lands to facilitate mineral and agribusiness development.
Mexico
Pressure on Mexico to free peasant ecologist
Mexican ecological defender Ildefonso Zamora is now in his seventh month behind bars, despite calls for his relase from Amnesty International and Greenpeace.
Central Asia
Protests rock Kazakhstan over land-grabbing
Hundreds have been detained in protests across Kazakhstan over a new government policy to privatize farmlands and open the agricultural sector to foreign capital.
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.
The Amazon
‘Stop Brazil’s Genocide’ campaign greets Olympics
Advocacy group Survival International has launched a campaign to prevent the annihilation of tribal peoples in Brazil, to coincide with the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
Central America
Nicaragua: campesino militant ‘assassinated’
In a hotly contested incident, Nicaraguan army troops killed "Comandante Invisible," a campesino leader who had just announced he was taking up arms against the government.
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: most dangerous country for ecologists
Human rights group Global Witness ranked Honduras as the world's most dangerous country for environmental defenders, with 109 slain over the past five years.
Southeast Asia
Bloody repression of peasant protests in Mindanao
Three were killed when security forces opened fire on farmers and lumad (indigenous people) who were blockading a highway in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
The Andes
Colombia: will paras fill post-FARC power vacuum?
Rights groups see an urgent threat that criminal gangs and paramilitary groups will fill the power vacuum in remote areas of Colombia as the FARC is demobilized.