A 225-foot "megaload" of oil field equipment being hauled along US Highway 12 through northern Idaho and Montana, bound for a tar-sands site in Canada, was repeatedly blocked by protesters this month. As it passed through the Nez Perce Indian Reservation Aug. 6, some 100 tribal members and their supporters blockaded the road, some throwing rocks as state police moved in. Authorities said 20 protesters were arrested, charged with misdemeanors for "disturbing the peace." Several Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee members were among those removed by police. The load was able to proceed after two hours, but was blocked again Aug. 13 by environmentalist protesters outside Missoula, Mont. (AP, Aug. 13, AP, Aug. 8, AP, Aug. 7; AP, Buffalo Post, Missoulia, Aug. 6)

Survivors of the 1988 chemical weapons attack on northern Iraq's Kurdish city of Halabja, which left up to 5,000 dead, announced this month that they will bring suit against companies that supplied chemical agents to the Saddam Hussein dictatorship. The head of the Association of Halabja Martyrs and Victims, Lokman Abdulkadir, said the group has identified 27 companies as complicit in the attack, and will appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to open a case against them. "The verdict of the ICC will be of utmost impoorrtance in terms of recognition of the Halabja massacre as a genocide," Abdulkadir said. "We want the companies selling those chemical weapons to the Baath regime to be called to account, be judged and pay compensation to the victims and their families." The companies are of US, German and French origin.

A three-vessel Freedom Flotilla carrying some 50 West Papuan and indigenous Australian protesters bound for the restive Indonesian territory of West Papua began its voyage from Queensland, Australia, this past week—to the dismay of both Austrailian and Indonesian authorities. The protestors, who hope "to reconnect two ancient cultures and to reveal the barriers that keep human rights abuses in West Papua from the attention of the international community," expect to make landfall in early September. "The initiative of Indigenous Elders of Australia and West Papua will build global solidarity and highlight the abuses of human rights and land rights carried out under the occupations of their lands on an international stage," the statement on the Flotilla's website reads.

Family members of inmates are keeping vigil outside Palmasola prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, with signs demanding to know the whereabouts of their loved ones, after an explosion of violence at the facility left at least 30 dead Aug. 24. Authorities have still not released the names of the dead and wounded in the conflagration that began as a fight between rival gangs.  Most of the victims burned to death after inmates blew up two propane tanks and fashioned others into improvised flamethrowers. Some prisoners jumped from the roof to escape the flames. Among those killed was an 18-month-old infant, one of some 250 children living in the prison with their incarcerated parents. Inmates at two other Bolivian prisons—San Pedro in La Paz, and San Sebatián in Cochabamba—have declared their own "state of emergency" in solidarity with the Palmasola prisoners, and to demand a solution to the grave problems in the country's penal institutions.

Paraguay's Congress on Aug. 22 voted up broad powers allowing the executive branch to use the armed forces for domestic policing—just one week after new President Horacio Cartes was sworn in, returning the once-entrenched right-wing Colorado Party to power after a hiatus of five years.  The vote follows a "state of alert" declared Aug. 18 after rebels of the Paraguayan People's Army (EPP) attacked the Brazilian-owned Kororó estate in Tacuatí, San Pedro department, killing four private guards and then engaging National Police troops who responded, injuring one. The left-nationalist EPP, which took up arms in 2005, has been increasingly active in the north of the country in recent months, attacking police posts and demanding redistribution of the landed estates to the peasantry. (BBC News, Ultima Hora, Paraguay, Aug. 22; La Nación, Paraguay, BBC News, DPA, Aug. 18; Ultima Hora, Aug. 17; BBC News, Aug. 15)

Campesinos occupying the contested Conga mine site in Peru's Cajamarca region on Aug. 20 tore down a gate they said had been illegally erected by the Yanacocha mining company across a trail used by locals as a traditional right-of-way. Video footage shows protesters using shovels and farm implements to tear up and drag away the metal gate across the pathway near Laguna Namocoha, one of the highland lakes that will be impacted by the mining project. National Police troops on hand apparently did not interfere. Idelso Hernández, leader of the Cajamarca Defense Front, challenged police and prosecutors to attend a campesino assembly to answer for allowing construction of the gates. Protesters said that if their demand for a meeting on the matter was not met, they would similarly take down two other gates built by the company blocking access to lagunas Azul and Cortada. (Celendin Libre, Aug. 20; video footage at Celendin Libre, Aug. 20)

Over 100 ethnic Tibetans were injured and one man committed suicide in Yulshul (Chinese: Yushu) prefecture* in the Kham region of Eastern Tibet (officially in Qinghai province), as Chinese military forces broke up protests against diamond mining in the area Aug. 19. As in similar protests elsewhere in Qinghai earlier that week, protestors put up large banners printed with President Xi Jinping's recent speech on environmental protection, and charged that the mines have not been approved by China's central government. The clash apparently began when some 1,000 protesters occupied two traditional Tibetan sacred sites, identified as Atod Yultso and Zachen Yultso, at a mine in Dzatoe (Chinese: Zaduo) township, and security forces fired tear-gas to disperse them. Eight protesters were detained, but two identified as leaders are reported to have "disappeared."

An Aug. 23 protest mobilization called by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, dubbed a "Friday of Martyrs," was portrayed as a failure in the Western press  (NYT), the military flooding the streets with armored vehicles, erecting barbed-wire barricades at major intersections—and taking the extraordinary move of ordering prominent mosques closed. But Egypt's Ahram Online reports that there were nonetheless street clashes in several cities—especially in the Nile Delta region north of Cairo. One protester was killed, and 25 injured, at Tanta, in the Delta's Gharbiya governorate. At Mansoura, in neighboring Daqahliya governorate, police used tear-gas as protesters were attackjed by hundreds of residents. Similar clashes were reported at Anshas Al-Raml village in the Delta's Sharqiya governorate, as supporters and opponents of Morsi hurled stones at each other.