From the Polytechnic Free Campaign, support group for dissident students at Amir Kabir University of Technology (formerly Tehran Polytechnic), Dec. 6:

On Tuesday the 4th of December, security police and masked intelligence agents arrested 28 students during a demonstration against the Iranian government. Some of them are detained in solitary confinement in the notorious high security lockup of 209 and some in the small lockup of the intelligence agency in central Tehran called Tracking office (Daftare Peygiri).

An imprisoned Eritrean has been named "Journalist of the Year 2007" by Reporters Without Borders. Seyoum Tsehaye has not been allowed a visit from his family or attorney during his six years in prison, the group says. He is one of 15 journalists being held in secret locations since 2001 when all non-government media groups were ordered closed. Eritrea was ranked bottom on overall press freedom this year by RWB—behind North Korea and Turkmenistan. The report said four journalists have died in Eritrean prisons in recent years.

Israeli forces carried out a series of raids in the West Bank the night of Dec. 5. Soliders invaded the village of Beit Sira, near the Green Line west of Ramallah, conducting house-to-house raids and seizing more than 20 Palestinians. (Ma'an News Agency, Dec. 5) Israeli forces also invaded Jenin refugee camp, firing bullets and sound grenades, breaking into several houses, and seizing four Palestinians. (Ma'an, Dec. 5) That same night, Fatah-allied Palestinian security forces detained eighteen Hamas supporters in in Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Salfit, Ramallah, and Hebron. (Ma'an, Dec. 5)

Canada's federal court ruled on Nov. 29 that the US breaches the rights of asylum seekers under the United Nations Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture. Justice Michael Phelan cited the example of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained in September 2002 by US immigration officials at JFK Airport in New York while in transit to Canada and deported to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months under a policy later identified as "extraordinary rendition."

A US Border Patrol official confirmed on Nov. 13 that agents investigating human smuggling on commercial bus lines arrested more than 100 illegal immigrants in the area of Twin Falls, Idaho, over the past week. The number of people arrested was later confirmed to be 108. Alex Harrington, spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Havre, Montana, said the ongoing operation was not coordinated with unconfirmed reports of repeated strikes over the past week by immigration agents at other locations, including malls and a bank.

On Nov. 29, shock troops from the Military Police of Sao Paulo state in Brazil invaded the Elizabeth Teixeira encampment of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in the Tatu Forest Plot in Limeira municipality near Campinas. The police agents destroyed makeshift homes and violently evicted the 250 families living on the encampment, which has been occupied by the MST since April 21, 2007. The police operation left some 30 people injured, some of them hit by police rubber bullets. MST leader Gilmar Mauro and Jose de Arimateia, coordinator of the encampment, were among those injured. The National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) had promised the MST that there would be negotiations to prevent an eviction. The MST blames the state government and the local authorities of Limeira for the police operation. (Adital, Nov. 29 from Prensa MST; Agencia Brasil, Nov. 29)

On Nov. 29 five Mapuche rights activists were in the 51st day of a hunger strike at the Angol prison in Chile's Region IX. Each of the hunger strikers—Mapuches Jaime Marileo Saravia, Juan Millalen Milla, Hector Llaitul Carrillanca and Jose Huenchunao and non-Mapuche Patricia Troncoso Roble—has lost more than 15 kilos. The five prisoners have been on hunger strike since Oct. 10 to demand the release of more than 20 indigenous Mapuche activists they consider political prisoners; an end to the militarization of the traditional Mapuche territories; and an end to repression against Mapuche activists.

Having lost his constitution reform vote by a razor-thin margin, Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez said he will accept the results—with caveats. "I faced a great dilemma," he said. "I wanted to wait until the results were irreversible, but we cannot subject the Venezuelan people to a long wait... I am proud of this effort." He admitted: "For now, we can't do it." (El Universal, Mexico, Dec. 3) "This is not a defeat. This is another 'for now,"' Chávez said, repeating a famous quote from when, as a paratrooper in 1992, he acknowledged his coup attempt had failed. (Reuters, Dec. 3)