In a July 13 statement, Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government to revise a draft law it said would limit freedom of assembly and expression, in contravention both of international standards and Iraq's own constitution. The bill contains provisions that would curtail the right to protest hold demonstrations that are seen to violate the "public interest" or the "general order or public morals"—without providing any definition of those terms. Those provisions, as well as the proposed criminalization of speech that "insults" a "sacred" symbol or person, clearly violate international law, Human Rights Watch said. “This law will undermine Iraqis’ right to demonstrate and express themselves freely,” the watchdog’s deputy Middle East director, Joe Stork, said. (AFP, HRW, July 13)

Mumbai was hit by three coordinated bomb blasts during the evening rush hour on July 13, killing at least 21 people and injuring over 100, including businessmen from the city's thriving gold and jewellery trade. No organization has claimed responsibility, but authorities say they suspect the Indian Mujahedeen, a terrorist group sworn to avenge the 2002 massacre of hundreds of Muslims in the neighboring state of Gujarat (which has claimed recent attacks in New Delhi, Jaipur and elsewhere). The anniversary of the 2006 Mumbai train blasts that killed more than 180 commuters also fell this week, on July 11.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) reports that as of July 8, at least 6,600 prisoners in at least 11 of the state’s 33 prisons have joined the hunger strike initiated by some 400 inmates at the Pelican Bay facility on July 1. With large numbers of inmates striking at Corcoran, Folsom, Tehachapi, Centinela, Calpatria and San Quentin state prisons, advocates and lawyers working to support the strike claim the number is much higher, and are pressing the CDCR to enter into negotiations with prisoners at Pelican Bay and immediately implement their demands. The demands outlined by hunger strike leaders in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay Prison include an end to long-term confinement and collective punishment, and an end to the practice of "debriefing," or requiring prisoners to divulge information about themselves and other prisoner in order to be released back into general population.

An attack July 12 on a Sinai gas pipeline pumping Egyptian natural gas to Israel and Jordan interrupted supply for the fourth time this year. A guard was wounded in the attack, which witnesses said was carried out by men driving two SUVs, and targeted a monitoring station near the airport in al-Arish, north Sinai’s largest town. The incident comes a week after a separate bomb attack on the pipeline reduced the flow of gas to Israel. No group has claimed responsibility for of the attacks, but authorities suspect Sinai-based Bedouins. The pipeline has long been a source of political controversy in Egypt, particularly since the signing of a 20-year gas export deal with Israel in 2008. (OnIslam, FT, The Guardian, July 12)

Ahmed Wali Karzai—half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, and the province's de facto ruling warlord—was assassinated July 12 at one of his five mansions by a senior commander of his own security detail, Sardar Mohammad. The assassin—a member of Karzai’s extended clan, the Popalzai, and a trusted family associate for decades—was immediately gunned down by the other bodyguards. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The Interior Ministry says an investigation is underway and several people who were guarding the home have been taken into custody. Cables released by WikiLeaks last year revealed suspicions by US diplomats that Karzai was involved in Afghan's opium trade. After one meeting with US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009, the diplomat said of Karzai, known by the acronym "AWK": "While we must deal with AWK as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." (AFP, ABC, MSNBC World Blog, July 12)

The Israeli army last week began tearing down a section of its separation barrier in the West Bank near Bil'in village, where weekly protests have become a symbol of opposition to the wall's encroachment on Palestinian land. The rerouting of the barrier, after long delays, was a rare instance in which Israeli military officials were forced to change plans by a court order. It comes four years after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on a petition by villagers that the barrier's route did not serve security needs, but cut through village farmland for purposes of expanding the adjacent Israeli settlement of Modi’in Ilit, a fast-growing town of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The court ordered the barrier torn down and rebuilt closer to the settlement.

Salva Kiir was officially been sworn in July 9 as the first president of South Sudan, moments after he signed the country’s transitional constitution before tens of thousands in the new republic's capital, Juba. Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, Kiir repeated his offer of an amnesty to the six rebel groups that have risen in South Sudan: “I want to offer public amnesty to all those who took arms against the people of South Sudan. Let them lay down these arms and help us in building this new nation,” Kiir said. He also pledged to work for a resolution to the conflicts in the border enclave of Abyei, and the North Sudan regions of Darfur and Kordofan. "I want to assure the people of Abyei, Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan that we have not forgotten you. When you cry, we cry. When you bleed, we bleed. I pledge to you today that we will find a just peace for all," he said. (Sudan Tribune, July 9)

The Kichwa people of Sarayaku, a remote community in Ecuador's Amazonian province of Pastaza, have brought suit against the Quito government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. The case charges that Ecuador signed a contract with Argentina's General Combustible Company (CGC) to explore and drill and drill for oil in an area known as Block 23, covering part of Sarayaku’s ancestral territory, in 1996. The indigenous community was not consulted, even though it was granted legal title to its lands in 1992. In 2002 and early 2003, the Ecuadoran armed forces occupied the lands in question as workers began seismic testing, at which time Sarayaku leaders were threatened and harassed for defending their territory, the suit charges.