A general strike was held Aug. 14 in Tunisia's Sidi Bouzid region to demand the release of detainees and resignation of the governor, the regional head of the National Guard, and the public prosecutor. The strike, called by the UGTT trade union federation, was widely observed, with all public and private businesses shut except the electric company. The detainees had been arrested in protests over the past weeks demanding development of the marginalized region, where water and power cuts are common. Sidi Bouzid is considered the birthplace of the Arab Spring; last year's Tunisian uprising was sparked when a street vendor in the city torched himself in December 2010 in protest over his precarious livelihood. (Tunis Afrique Presse via AllAfrica, AFP, Aug. 14)

Mali's military said Aug. 14 that troops from the Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) could assist in a campaign to take back the country's north from Islamist rebels, but would not be allowed in the capital, Bamako. "There is no question of soldiers from ECOWAS bloc in Bamako but [they could send] some to the North. We could have 600-800 ECOWAS troops in support of ours," said chief of staff Col. Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele. (Reuters, Aug. 14) One week earlier, Iyad Ag Ghali—leader of Ansar Dine, one of the Islamist groups in control of the north—met with Burkina Faso's foreign minister, Djibril Bassole, in the northern town of Kidal, and said he is open to mediation efforts to reunite the country. "We are going to work together to find peace,’" Ag Ghali told reporters at Kidal airport.

Lisandro Tenorio Troche, a traditional elder and healer of the Nasa indigenous people in Colombia's southwestern department of Cauca, was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorcycle Aug. 12 at vereda (hamlet) Pílamo in resguardo (indigenous reserve) López Adentro, Caloto municipality. Community leaders said they believe the assassins weref rom the FARC rebels, who had threatened Tenorio and his family in recent days. The Nasa communities have in recent weeks stepped up their campaign to demand that all armed actors—government troops, paramilitaries and guerillas alike—respect their constitutionally protected autonomy and refrain from operating on their lands.

Hundreds of anarchists from all over the world gathered Aug. 8-12 in the town of Saint-Imier in the Jura region of Switzerland to mark the 140th anniversary of a congress which saw the anarchists break with the workers' movement dominated by Karl Marx. The International Anarchism Gathering called for public protests and strikes to oppose austerity measures imposed in response to the European debt crisis. "Capitalism goes from crisis to crisis, so this is an opportunity for us," said Aristides Pedraza, one of the event organizers.

Tribal communities across Bangladesh on Aug. 9 observed the International Day of the World's Indigenous People with rallies to demand their constitutional recognition as "indigenous people." An especially large mobilization was held in Rangamati in the southeastern Chittagong Hill Tracts. (See map.) The protests were a reaction to recent statements by Foreign Minister Dipu Moni that the tribal peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts are "ethnic minorities" and should not be called "indigenous" to the region. Tribal leaders criticized the government for failure to fully implement Chittagong Hill Tracts peace accord, reached in 1997 to secure land rights for the region's tribal peoples. "There is regular bloodshed in the hills," said Jyotirindra Bodhipriya Larma, chairman of Chittagong Hill Tracts Regional Council. "Either the peace accord in the hills will be implemented or the Jumma people will be extinct."

Following a wave of protests on Okinawa against the planned deployment of a fleet of MV-22 Osprey aircraft by the US Marine Corps at the island's Futenma Air Station, the US Defense Department and Japan's government announced Aug. 5 that they will delay the deployment pending further tests of the aircraft's safety. The protests had the strong support of Takeshi Onaga, mayor of Naha, Okinawa's capital, and also won the sympathy of Yoshihiko Fukuda, mayor of Iwakuni, the city in southern Honshu's Yamaguchi prefecture where the 12 aircraft were to be assembled. In June, a US Air Force Osprey crashed in Florida, injuring all five airmen aboard, while a crash in Morocco in April left two Marines dead. The Ospreys, a hybrid craft that incorporates elements of both planes and helicopters, were to replace older CH-46 helicopters that are currently deployed at Futenma. (Japan Times, Aug. 5; RTT, July 27; AP, July 23; AP, July 20)

More than 500 residents in the campesino community of Tumpa in Yungay province of Peru's central Andean region of Áncash, began blocking roads leading to the local operations of the Mina California company Aug. 6, declaring an open-ended paro (civil strike) to demand a halt to the mine's pollution of local waters. The mine is located near Nevado Huascarán, Peru's highest mountain, and the national park of the same name, which forms the headwaters of several of Peru's major rivers. (Servindi, Aug. 6) That same day, Aymara indigenous residents of Acora community in Puno region announced that a 72-hour paro will begin Aug. 13, to protest President Ollanta Humala's plans to move ahead with the Pasto Grande II irrigation project. The Pasto Grande II project would divert waters from the Lake Titicaca basin for agribusiness tracts on the coast in Moquegua region. The strike, called by the South Puno Natural Resources Defense Front, will also protest contamination of local waters by mining and other extractive industries. (Pachamama Radio, Aug. 10; Los Andes via La Mula, Aug. 6)

On Aug. 1, Peru's President Ollanta Humala signed a decree extending for another 60 days the state of emergency in the remote jungle area called the VRAE, for the Apurímac-Ene River Valley, where a remnant faction of the Shining Path guerilla movement remains active. However, as we have repeatedly noted, the acronym "VRAE" is becoming an elastic term defined by areas where the Shining Path is active rather than by geography. The state of emergency includes Echarate district, in La Convención province, Cuzco region—in the valley of the Urubamba, the next river basin to the east of the Apurímac-Ene. Similarly, districts of Tayacaja province in Huancavelica region are also affected—in the watershed of the Río Mantaro, to the west of the Apurímac-Ene, and on the edge of the central Andean section of the country. Affected districts in Ayacucho and Junín regions constitute the VRAE "proper"—actually within the Apurímac-Ene watershed. Most of the affected districts have been under a repeatedly extended state of emergency since May 2003, but Echarate only came under the decree in April after guerillas took scores of oil pipeline construction workers hostage.