Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Aug. 28 promised to return 6 million hectares of farmland stolen by paramilitary groups after the original owners were forcibly displaced. The president said he will soon present congress with a Land Restitution Law aimed at restoring lands to the displaced, who now number more than 3 million. (Colombia Reports, Aug. 28)

Authorities in the south of Colombia on Aug. 29 found the bodies of two indigenous leaders who had been shot by unknown assassins. Ramiro Inampues and his wife, Maria Lina Galindez, were reported missing two days earlier, after Inampues failed to attend the regular session of the Guachucal Council in Nariño department, where he held a seat for the Indigenous Social Alliance (ASI). The bodies were found in a ditch in El Común, a pueblo near the border with Ecuador.

Four people were detained Aug. 25 for a deadly attack on Chinese military police last week in the far western region of Xinjiang, state media reported. In the Aug. 19 attack, a member of the Uighur minority apparently rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a checkpoint at a highway intersection near the city of Aksu, some 400 miles west of the provincial capital Urumqi and 37 miles from China's border with Kyrgyzstan. Six police were killed and 15 injured in the first major terrorist attack in China since 2008. (Reuters, Aug. 25; CSM, People's Daily, Aug. 19)

In a New York Times op-ed Aug. 26, "China's Discreet Hold on Pakistan's Northern Borderlands," Selig S. Harrison of the Center for International Policy writes that Islamabad has effectively handed over de facto control of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to Beijing. Although the region is largely closed to the outside world, Harrison cites reports indicating a "simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army." He describes the development as "a quiet geopolitical crisis" in the Himalayan borderlands of contested Kashmir.

An indigenous tribe in India has won a stunning victory over one of the world's biggest mining companies. In an unprecedented move, India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has blocked Vedanta Resources' controversial plan to mine bauxite on the sacred hills of the Dongria Kondh tribe. 
Ramesh said Vedanta has shown a "shocking" and "blatant disregard for the rights of the tribal groups." The Minister has also questioned the legality of the massive refinery Vedanta has already built below the hills.
 The news is a crushing defeat for Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, Vedanta's majority owner and founder.


Brazil's President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva has signed a contract allowing the construction of the hugely controversial Belo Monte mega-dam on the Amazonian Xingu River to go ahead. Lula said, "I think this is a victory for Brazil's energy sector." Belo Monte, if built, will be the third largest dam in the world. It will devastate the local environment and threaten the lives of the thousands of indigenous people living in the area, whose land and food sources will be seriously damaged.

Two cars exploded Aug. 27 in Ciudad Victoria, capital of Mexico's conflicted Tamaulipas state—one in front of the local office of the Televisa TV network, which was being guarded by a congingent of soldiers; the other in front of a municipal police station. No casualties were reported, but the blast at Televisa's Canal 26 knocked out the signal for several hours. The blasts come as authorities are investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants in Tamaulipas this week.

On Aug. 24, Mexico's Navy found 72 bodies on a ranch located in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, some 150 kilometers from the US border. The discovery was made after Navy personnel conducting operations in the vicinity repelled an attack by presumed narco-gunmen, in which one marine and three assailants were killed. After the gunfight, an 18-year-old man, Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla of Ecuador, staggered to the Navy's highway checkpoint requesting medical attention, having suffered a bullet wound to his face. Lala proved to be the sole survivor of the massacre at the nearby ranch, where the bodies were subsequently found.