Suspected Islamist separatists shot and killed three Buddhist women involved with a project for victims of Thailand's insurgency March 19. The victims were headed to work at a farm project funded by Thailand's Queen Sirikit in the Nong Chik district of Pattani province, one of several in the area set up to help distressed women, including some widowed by the political violence. The project teaches the women to grow vegetables, fruit and other basic necessities. Assailants on a motorcycle drove up next to the truck the women were riding in and fired randomly. Thirteen other women escaped unharmed.

Kyrgyzstan has demanded the US hand over for trial an Air Force serviceman who shot dead a Kyrgyz truck driver in December at the Manas airbase. The Kyrgyz government threatened to review its agreement with the US on the use of the base, where US troops have been operating since 2001. The US maintains the troops enjoy similar status to diplomats and cannot be prosecuted by Kyrgyz courts. US officials say the truck driver threatened the airman with a knife at a Manas checkpoint. The serviceman shot him twice in the chest. US officials said the airman "used deadly force in response to a threat". President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who has demanded more rent for the Manas base, said the airman should not leave the country until an investigation has taken place. (Reuters, March 19)

Waving Puerto Rican and Iraqi flags, hundreds of demonstrators picketed in front of the US National Guard headquarters in Puerto Rico on March 17 as part of an international weekend of protests against the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which began on March 19, 2003. The picket line was organized by Mothers Against War and was supported by the Puerto Rican Independence Party, the Socialist Front and the Hostos National Independence Movement (MINH). Thousands of Puerto Ricans are participating in the US military operation. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, March 18)

At dawn on March 6, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the low-income Canal neighborhood of San Rafael in Marin County, California. The raids, part of ICE's national "Operation Return to Sender," were supposedly based on 30 warrants for people who had prior deportation orders. The ICE agents returned to the neighborhood early on March 7 and carried out more arrests; at least one similar raid took place in nearby Novato over March 6-7. ICE agents apparently returned to San Rafael for the third consecutive day on Mar. 8 to make further arrests. San Rafael police were notified that ICE would be making arrests near the city's downtown area between 7 and 8 AM, said police spokesperson Margo Rohrbacher. Some of the immigrants may have been deported the same day they were arrested, an immigration official said on March 8. (Marin Independent Journal, Novato, March 7, 8, 9)

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) states in its annual report that the "democratic security" policy of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe could have negative implications for human rights in the conflicted South American country. The report said the government should stop gauging the success of military operations by the number of casualties, which is one of the main incentives for extrajudicial killings.

Indigenous peoples have no future under the neoliberal system, because it doesn't respect their traditional self-government (usos y costumbres) and seeks to eliminate their ethnic identity, said the Bishop Emeritus of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who brokered the dialogue with the Zapatista rebels in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas. He said that the salvation of the West is in the indigenous world, which poses a communitarian alternative to the individualist ethic which threatens contemporary societies. Ruiz was speaking at a conference at the Universidad Iberoamericana's Puebla campus. (La Jornada, March 14)

Two peasant ecologists, Don Marcos Paz and Bulmaro Cuiriz, adherents of the Zapatista "Other Campaign" and the local Unión de Comuneros Emiliano Zapata (UCEZ), were arrested March 9 in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, on what the UCEZ says are false charges of property destruction related to their efforts to defend the land rights of the Zirahuen indigenous community. UCEZ says the developers of a tourism project have illegally encroached on forested areas of the Zirahuen community. (La Jornada, March 14; UCEZ, March 9)

Some 500 Mexican army troops and Federal Preventative Police took over the Public Security Secretariat of southern Tabasco state March 17, and arrested three high-ranking police commanders. The three officials, summarily fired upon their arrests, are part of a clique known as "La Hermandad" (The Brotherhood) that took control of state police operations during the administration of former Gov. Manuel Andrade (2000-2006). La Hermandad is suspected of ordering the hit on the new Public Security Secretariat (SSPT) director, Gen. Francisco Fernández Solís. Fernández was shot and his chauffeur killed in an ambush in the state capital Villahermosa on March 6. Federal authorities also took control of the state armory and confiscated all the weapons to conduct ballistics tests and determine if any were used in the assault on Gen. Fernández.