Freedom's on the march. From India's Zee News, June 19 (emphasis added):

KABUL — Forced to wear yellow patches in the days of the Taliban, the homesick Sikhs of Afghanistan still hide in back alleys and yearn for India. In the Taliban's birthplace, the southern city of Kandahar, their children cannot go to school and locals stone or spit on the men in the streets, who mostly try to hide in the narrow alleys of the mud-brick older quarter of the city.

At least seven children were killed in a US air raid against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout in the Zargun Shah district of eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province June 17. The victims are believed to have been students at a madrassa near a mosque at the targeted compound. The Coalition statement expressing regret for the loss of life said residents in the area had confirmed that al-Qaeda fighters were present in the area all day. "This is another example of al-Qaeda using the protective status of a mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves," said Major Chris Belcher. The mosque is said to have been slightly damaged in the strike. (AKI, June 18)

A trial on the apparent CIA kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan has been suspended to allow time for Italy's supreme court to rule on whether prosecutors overstepped their constitutional bounds. The trial is not expected to resume until late October. The Italian government conteds that the prosecutors should not have sought the extradition of the US agents, and thus revealed their identity.

The June 18 New York Times features a front-page above-the-fold story by Jeffrey Gettleman, "In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality"—the first significant account in the "newspaper of record" of the forgotten war on the Ogaden people (which apppears proudly on the Ogaden Online website). The lead photo features dread-locked rifle-toting guerillas of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), with whom Gettleman trudged across the desert, in an area closed to outsiders by Ethiopian government decree. He visited war-ravaged villages where residents told him account after harrowing account of government troops burning homes, killing and abducting residents, and engaging in wholesale rape and torture with impunity.

On June 12, Garifuna leader Felix Ordoñez Suazo was assassinated at the community of Punta Piedras, in Colón department on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Community residents identified the killers as members of a group of land invaders who have been encroaching on Punta Piedras' titled lands. The conflict began in 1992, when a group of campesino settlers financed by business interests linked to the military began colonizing the area. Despite the fact that Punta Piedras had title to the lands in question as an ejido since 1921, the National Agrarian Institute (INA) granted the invaders a title to overlapping territory in 1999. Punta Piedras is preparing to bring a complaint in the matter to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (CIDH). (Oil Watch Mesoamerica, June 13)

Resuming his national tour of Mexico, Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista rebels met June 14 with residents of Loma de Santa María barrio in Morelia, Michoacán, who oppose a so-called "mega-tunnel" state authorities plan to build through their neighborhood. After a closed meeting with the residents, Marcos joined community leaders at a press conference where he said, "The earth is like a human body, and if you destroy a natural area, it is as if you cut off an arm. The politicians are trying to convince us this is possible, when we know it is not true." (Cambio de Michoacán, June 14) Opponents say the tunnel will negatively impact several green areas on the outer rings of the city, including Bosque Cuauhtémoc, Bosque Lázaro Cárdenas and La Loma de Santa María. (Cambio de Michoacán, June 7)

On June 14, Jose Luis Soberanes Fernandez, president of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), confirmed that soldiers had raped at least two underage girls and possibly two others during an anti-drug operation in Caracuaro, Michoacan, from May 2 to May 4. Soberanes was unable to say whether the military would punish the soldiers. But he added that the "Secretariat of National Defense [SEDENA] can't be the judge and a party [in the case] at the same time." President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa's campaign to use the military across the country to control organized crime has led to several abuses, including the June 1 shooting deaths of five members of an extended family—three of them children—by soldiers in Sinaloa state. "[W]hat happened in Sinaloa tells us that the army isn't prepared to take on the functions of the police," Soberanes told the press on June 14. (La Jornada, June 15)

The Chamber of Representatives of the Colombian Congress voted 62-43 the night of June 14 to approve a law recognizing civil unions. The law would allow same-sex couples to register if they have lived together for two years and are not in other marriages or civil unions. If one partner dies, the survivor would automatically inherit and would receive social security payments and other work-related benefits. The Senate is expected to approve the law and send it to rightwing president Alvaro Uribe for approval on June 19; supporters expect no obstacles from Uribe. Although some Latin American cities have recognized same-sex unions--including Mexico City last November--no country in the region has passed a national law for civil unions. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, June 16 from AP)