Laid-off workers from the Doe Run Peru metal smelting complex—closed due to toxic pollution—held a protest in front of the Labor Ministry in Lima April 19 to demand that Peru's government save their jobs by allowing the plant to re-open. The rally came in response to a decision April 11 by the smelter's creditors—including the Peruvian state, due to numerous unpaid fines—to reject a restructuring plan from Doe Run Peru, a unit of Missouri-based Renco Group, casting doubt on the future of the idled complex at La Oroya, in Junín region. Once one of the largest smelters in Peru, it has been shut since 2009 due to insolvency and a stalled environmental clean-up plan. A May 1 deadline for the company to come up with an acceptable clean-up plan—officially dubbed the Environmental Adjustment and Management Program (PAMA)—has been pushed back to June by the Ministry of Energy and Mines. But the case is now mired in multiple lawsuits—and the local community at La Oroya is bitterly divided.

UN agencies in the occupied West Bank said April 22 that Israel last week destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees—leaving 54 people homeless, including 35 children. A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the April 18 demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in East Jerusalem's Beit Hanina neighborhood. Ma'an News Agency reported that Jewish settlers moved into the homes the same day. A day later, Israeli forces demolished and confiscated emergency tents provided to the evicted Khalayleh families by humanitarian organizations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Relief and Works Agency said in a joint statement.

South Sudanese forces retreated from the oil-producing enclave of Heglig on April 20, as northern forces moved in. Khartoum portrayed it as a military victory, while South Sudan said it has ordered its forces out. "The Republic of South Sudan announces that SPLA troops have been ordered to withdraw from Panthou [Heglig]," said South Sudan's information minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin. "An orderly withdrawal will commence immediately, and shall be completed within three days." In the wake of the fighting, Sudanese President Omar Bashir announced that he will not allow the South to export any oil through the cross-border pipeline. "We don’t want fees from the oil of South Sudan and we will not open the pipeline," Bashir told thousands of supporters at a Khartoum rally. "There is no oil from South Sudan that will pass through our pure land, so that not one dollar goes to these criminals." Referring to the South Sudanese as "insects," he accused them of backing rebel movements in the north's territory: "We tell the president of insects Salva Kiir, your forces left through force and did not withdraw from Heglig and our men entered it by force and your aggression is continuing in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan..." (Sudan Tribune, April 21)

An elderly man set himself on fire as a protest in Kyrgyzstan's southern city of Osh on April 15, and died of his injuries later in a hospital. The incident is being portrayed as a "protest against protests"; he apparently left a note calling on the Central Asian republic's citizens "to stop constant protest actions" and respect the country's leadership. The city is near the border with Uzbekistan, and has seen ongoing rival demonstrations since a wave of deadly clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in 2010. Kyrgyzstan's government has been trying to remove acting mayor Melis Myrzakmatov since the clashes, fearing his Kyrgyz ethno-natoinalist politics are fueling unsrest. His followers have repeatedly rallied in his support, with ethnic Uzbeks holding counter-demonstrations. According to official data, over 3,000 protests took place in the country in 2011; a major mobilization was held in the south this March, with Myrzakmatov's supporters demanding the government's resignation. (RFE.RL, RIA-Novosti, April 16; The Telegraph, March 29; International Crisis Group, March 29)

The Libyan government took control of Tripoli's international airport on April 20 from the Zintan militia that has had control of the site since Moammar Qaddafi was deposed last year (sometimes in contest with rival militias). The deal to turn over the airport followed months of negotiations about jobs and salaries for the militia's members. It was portrayed by Reuters as an important step in consolidation of the new government's authority. Failing to make the wire services, Amnesty International on April 19 called on the National Transitional Council (NTC) to investigate and prosecute abuses against members of the Tawargha community, outside the city of Misrata, following another report of a community member being tortured to death at a detention center run by local militias. The body of a 44-year-old father of two was delivered to his family on April 16, covered with bruises and cuts, including an open wound to the back of the head, Amnesty said. More than a dozen torture-deaths in militia custody have been documented by Amnesty since September, with Tawarghas constituting a high proportion of victims.

With Sudan and South Sudan already effectively at war, reports indicate that each are arming rebel movements in the other's territory. Last week the South Sudanese military—officially the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA)—took the oil-producing enclave of Heglig from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), ostensibly in retaliation for SAF raids across the border. Sudan's President Omar Bashir on April 20 threatened to teach the South "a final lesson by force" if it doesn't withdraw from the enclave. (LAT, April 20) Amid the stand-off, the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey released a report finding that the SPLA is arming the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLMN), which is fighting to liberate South Kordofan state—where Heglig is located—from Khartoum's control. The report similarly charged that the SAF is arming the South Sudan Democratic Movement (SSDM) and South Sudan Liberation Army (SSLA), which are fighting the SPLA in South Sudan's Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity states. (See map.) The report also found evidence that Eritrea is cooperating with Khartoum in arming the SSDM and SSLA. The Small Arms Survey's Jonah Leff told Sudan Tribune that the support of rebels on both sides is "a symptom of the greater issue, which is oil and land." (ST, April 17 via AllAfrica)

Peru's Panamericana TV on April 18 broadcast an interview with the leader of the Sendero Luminoso guerillas who last week took hostage some 40 Camisea gas pipeline workers in the lowland rainforest of Cuzco—adding further confusion to the already extremely murky affair. In the interview, Martín Quispe Palomino AKA "Comrade Gabriel" boasts that his forces freed the hostages voluntarily and that the abduction served to lure more government troops into the territory so as to heat up the insurgency. A smiling Comrade Gabriel said: "We asked for a ransom but we knew they [the government] wouldn't pay. We did it so that these hopeless reactionaries would send in the armed forces and we could annihilate them. This was our objective." He added: "Let them militarize the pipeline. We'd have the upper hand and would annihilate the armed forces, right?"

The special panel charged with conducting a review of the environmental impact study for the controversial Conga gold mining project in Peru's northern Andean region of Cajamarca handed its findings in to the central government April 17, and the 260-page document was posted to the website of the Environment Ministry (MINAM). The review calls for "better guarantees" of protection of local watersheds, and states that "alternatives should be evaluated" to filling alpine lakes with mine tailings. But both Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar Vidal and the document's authors—three European experts, two Spaniards and one Portuguese—emphasized that the study's purpose is just to make "technical recommendations," not to determine the Conga project's viability; This is a reversal of how the review was portrayed for months prior to its release. (Reuters, April 18; Peru This Week, RPP, EFE, La Republica, April 17)