More than 3,500 Congolese soldiers, supported by 600 UN troops and helicopter gunships, launched attacks Dec. 24 on guerillas operating in the eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sixteen government troops and some 35 guerillas are reported killed in fighting near the city of Beni in Nord-Kivu province. An Indian blue beret peacekeeper was killed and four of his colleagues wounded when their camp was hit by a guerilla rocket-propelled grenade. But 300 Nepalese peacekeepers and 1,500 government troops captured the guerilla-held village of Nioka, 50 miles north-east of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district. The guerilla militia the operation was launched to uproot, the ADF/NALU (Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda), is seeking the overthrow of President Yoweri Museveni's regime in Uganda, across the eastern border.

From AP, Dec. 23:

PARIS — A French military tribunal opened an investigation Friday into allegations that French peacekeepers facilitated attacks on ethnic minority Tutsis during the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Rwandans, judicial officials said.

From Indian Country Today, Dec. 16:

PORTLAND, Maine - American Indian leaders from four tribes in Maine met with representatives of the Venezuelan Embassy and became the first tribes in the nation to begin working out details for the delivery of low-cost heating oil to tribal members.

It seems the NYPD has ben busy infiltrating bicycle rides in the name of the War on Terrorism for the past year and change. From the Dec. 22 New York Times—fortunately the front page:

Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

From Reuters, Dec. 19:

The World Court in The Hague found on Monday that Uganda violated the sovereignty of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo and was responsible for human rights abuses there during a 1998-2003 war.

Eight men at the American detention camp in Guantánamo Bay have separately given their lawyers "consistent accounts" of being tortured at a secret prison in Afghanistan at various periods from 2002 to 2004, Human Rights Watch has announced. The men, five of whom were identified by name, told their lawyers that they had been arrested in various countries, mostly in Asia and the Middle East. Some said they were flown to Afghanistan and then driven just a few minutes from the landing strip to the prison, indicating they were near Kabul.

We recently noted how Ethiopia and Eritrea, as they mutually demonize each other, are both engaging in a crackdown on their own media. Now the Committee to Protect Journalists, in their year-end report on imprisoned journalists worldwide, finds the two Horn of Africa rivals to be the worst offendors after China and Cuba. Uzbekistan was in fifth place, while the nasty and ostracized dictatorship of Burma was tied for sixth with the Leader of the Free World—that's right, none other than the good ol' US of A.

From the New York Times, Dec. 12 (and apparently little-reported elsewhere):

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan, Dec. 11 - In the remote hamlet of Tamga, residents frustrated by corruption and the sorry legacy of a chemical spill did something that would have been unthinkable in Kyrygzstan not long ago: they rose up.