On Dec. 10 human rights organizations in Latin America celebrated the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by holding ceremonies, staging protests and issuing reports on the situation in their countries.

The Colombian human rights organization CODHES has released a new analysis, entitled "The numbers do not add up," challenging the government's statistics of claimed successes against illegal armed groups (principally the FARC). The armed forced claim some 114,000 killed, captured or surrendered over the last six years. Yet those armed groups, according to previous government estimates, do not exceed 30,000 members. Even allowing for recruiting to replenish depleted ranks, the figures indicate eight fighters killed every single day in Colombia—something not substantiated by any other sources. (Radio Australia, Dec. 14; BBC News, Dec. 13)

Enrique Portocarrero, dubbed "Captain Nemo" in Colombia, is accused of building up to 20 fiberglass submarines for narco-traffickers to haul cocaine to Central America and Mexico. Following a three-year investigation involving US and British intelligence, Colombia's Department of Administrative Security (DAS) arrested Portocarrero last month in the port city of Buenaventura (Norte del Valle department), where he apparently led a double life as a shrimp fisherman. A raid on Portocarrero's hidden "shipyard" in a mangrove swamp down the Pacific coast near Tumaco (Nariño department) turned up two of the vessels, each capable of carrying eight tons. (LAT, Dec. 14)

Militants used patrol bombs to torch 25 supply trucks and oil containers for Afghanistan-based coalition forces near Peshawar, Pakistan early Dec. 13. It marked the fifth attack on a Peshawar area freight terminal within ten days, bringing the number of destroyed containers and oil tankers to around 325. (Xinhua, Dec. 13) The following day, three police officers were killed and 12 others wounded in a bomb blast in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the latest in a fast-escalating wave of attacks. (Reuters, Dec. 14)

Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni of the anti-immigrant Northern League met with protests after proposing a moratorium on the building of mosques in the wake of arrests on Dec. 2 of two Moroccans suspected of plotting terrorist attacks—one of whom was a preacher at an "unofficial" Milan mosque. The left-wing opposition and Italian Muslim leaders criticized the proposed legislation, which would halt the building of mosques without state oversight. A high-ranking Vatican official, Msgr. Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said he was in favor of allowing new mosques provided the state could ensure they would be used for religious purposes.

Greek protesters Dec. 13 attacked a police station and ministry building as well as shops and banks in Athens with petrol bombs in an eighth day of protests following the killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police. Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. The Exarchia district, where the police station was fire-bombed, and the area around Athens Polytechnic University remained the centers of street-fighting. Hundreds of stores have been smashed and looted, and more than 200 people have been arrested in the unrest so far.

The Indian navy announced Dec. 13 it had captured 23 Somali and Yemeni pirates while coming to the defense of an Ethiopian-flagged merchant vessel in the Gulf of Aden. Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking before a Bahrain conference sponsored by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, called for international action against the pirates.

Samir Adil, president of the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), was among those wounded in a Dec. 11 suicide attack on a reconciliation meeting in the divided northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. His wounds are not life-threatening, the IFC reports via e-mail. The IFC has been working across ethnic divides in Kirkuk to unite local communities against the US occupation and sectarian militias.