India's Maoists guerillas threatened more attacks March 26, 11 days after they killed 55 police and tribal militia in a raid on their camp in the central state of Chhattisgarh. The two-page statement signed by "Azad" called the attack a "heroic and tactical counter-offensive by the Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army against state-sponsored reign of terror." The statement pledged "bigger" attacks if the Salwa Judum (Campaign for Peace) movement was not stopped. The government-sponsored movement is recruiting local tribespeople as informants. Tens of thousands have also been forcibly relocated from their villages into army-controlled camps in an effort to isolate the populace from the Maoists. "The guerrillas assisted by the Bhoomkal militia will take up attacks on bigger scale if the Salwa Judum campaign is not withdrawn," the statement said. Bhoomkal means "land army" in a local tribal language, and is the name of the Maoists' own armed network among the populace. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said last year the Maoist revolt was the biggest internal security challenge facing India since independence in 1947. (Reuters, March 26)

Venezuela has announced it is working on a number of new oil deals with China, as it aims to reduce its dependence upon crude exports to the US. The China National Petroleum Corporation is expected to sink new investments in Venezuela's oil facilities. The announcement comes as President Hugo Chavez is pushing a reorganization of Venezuela's oil industry which would strip major US companies such as Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron of their majority stakes in Venezuelan oil projects. "The United States as a power is on the way down, China is on the way up," said Chavez after the announcement. "China is the market of the future." (BBC, March 25)

The Los Angeles Times reported March 25 on new CIA intelligence indicating that the Colombia's army chief, Gen. Mario Montoya, collaborated extensively with right-wing paramilitaries that Washington considers terrorist organizations. The report circulated within the CIA and obtained by the LAT claims Montoya and a paramilitary group jointly planned and carried out a 2002 "Operation Orion" to eliminate guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin. Operation Orion sent 3,000 Colombian army troops and police, supported by helicopter gunships, into the vast guerilla-controlled shantytowns ringing Medellin. At least 14 people were killed in the operation, and rights observers say dozens more disappeared in its aftermath. The UN and Organization of American Stateshave investigated the reports, and Colombian Sen. Gustavo Petro, an opponent of Uribe, publicly charged that 46 disappeared during the operation.

Early on March 20 in Tirua, in Chile's Region VIII, police arrested Jose Huenchunao Marinan, a Mapuche community leader (werken) and activist who had been in hiding for nearly three years. Huenchunao, a member of the Arauco-Malleco Mapuche Coordinating Committee, was sentenced in August 2004 to 10 years in prison for a December 2001 arson attack against the Poluco Pidenco estate, property of Forestal Mininco, a subsidiary of the Compania Manufacturera de Papeles y Cartones (CMPC), in Ercilla, Region IX. A number of other activists, including Patricia Troncoso Robles, Juan Carlos Huenulao and brothers Juan and Jaime Marileo Sarabia, were also sentenced to 10 years in the same case. (Argenpress, March 23 via Resumen Latinoamericano; La Tercera, Santiago, March 22; UPI, March 20 via Terra Noticias; Santiago Times, March 21 via UNPO)

On March 24 Salvador Garcia Ledesma, general operations director of the Mexican mining company Luismin, offered to pay the community of Nuevo Carrizalillo, Eduardo Neri municipality, in the southern state of Guerrero, an annual rent of 8,000 pesos (about $726) for each of the 900 hectares of land the company is mining for gold. Community residents, who along with some miners have blockaded the Los Filos-El Bermejal mines at various times since Jan. 8, rejected the offer, although it was more than eight times the payment the company originally committed to. The community is now holding out for 50,000 pesos ($4,538) a year for each hectare; in January they demanded 92,000 for each of 700 hectares. Garcia Ledesma says that Luismin, the Mexican mining division of the Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc., has lost about $180,000 so far in the dispute. (La Jornada, March 25)

During the week of March 19, federal officials transferred all 72 children out of a Texas detention facility for unaccompanied minors amid allegations that staff there had sexually abused some of the detainees. The 72 children held at the Texas Sheltered Care facility in Nixon were transferred to several destinations, said Tara Wall, a spokesperson at the federal government's Office of Refugee Resettlement. Some were sent to other child detention facilities in Texas, while others were deported. "No person who had made allegations of abuse was deported," according to Wall.

Early on March 19, ICE agents raided an apartment building in the village of Mount Kisco, in the lower Hudson Valley area of New York state, allegedly searching for a fugitive. Local police said the fugitive, Estanslao Lopez, is an immigrant with multiple criminal convictions—though they wouldn't release his rap sheet. Village police Lt. Patrick O'Reilly referred questions to immigration officials. "It was their operation," he said. The raided apartment building was apparently Lopez's last known address.

On March 23, a three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Alexandria, Virginia, unanimously affirmed a civil contempt ruling against former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist who has refused to testify in front of a federal grand jury investigating Islamic charities in northern Virginia. Al-Arian had argued that a plea agreement in his Florida prosecution exempts him from testifying before the grand jury.