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.

From the American Civil Liberties Union, March 15:

DENVER - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a complaint against three White House staffers for illegally ejecting Denver residents from a taxpayer-funded town hall with President Bush, even though they had done nothing to disrupt the event. The residents, who have been dubbed the “Denver 3” by the media, were singled out because of an anti-war bumper sticker on their car.

More than 500 Muslim villagers gathered at southern Thailand's Sabaiyoi town March 18 to demand justice after a midnight attack on an Islamic school left two young students dead and eight wounded. Students were asleep at the boarding school when assailants threw grenades and strafed the building with automatic rifle fire. Unidentified assailants also threw a grenade into a local mosque, injuring 11, on March 15, the same day suspected Islamist militants killed eight Buddhist civilians in an attack on a van. Local authorities blamed the schoool-house attack on Islamist militants, but this is disputed by local residents.