The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba), based in the Highlands of Mexico's conflicted southern Chiapas state, has issued a new report charging that 13 years after an armed uprising in the state, the roots of the conflict still prevail. The report, "Armed Conflict and its Actors in 2006," finds a resurgence of paramilitary activity, especially attacks on Zapatista communities and attempts to evict them from their lands. The Zapatistas have observed a truce since shortly after their New Years Day 1994 rebellion. Noting that the Zapatistas have concentrated over the past year on an unarmed civil initiative, the "Other Campaign," the report protests that "Military...actions have intensified against...social protest and...organizations that have opted for the construction of a civil and pacific national movement." The report finds that a de facto "state of exception" has persisted in Chiapas despite federal administrations in Mexico City coming and going.

The Mexican senate has passed a package of reforms to Article 139 of the Federal Penal Code modeled on anti-terrorist legislation in the United States—above the objections of the left-opposition PRD, PT and Convergence, whose legislators assailed the changes as "criminalizing social protest." Under the changes, any act of violence aimed at influencing government policy is classified as terrorism, with a penatly of six to 40 years in prison. (La Jornada, April 27)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced details of an arms build-up which he says will include a sophisticated missile defense system. "We're going to have a tremendous air-defense system, and with with missiles capable of reaching 200 kilometers," Chavez said during a televised speech April 27 at a military academy in Caracas. He boasted the plan "will convert Venezuela into a nation truly invulnerable to any external threat, invulnerable to any plan of aggression."

Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, on a tour of Latin America, stopped in Nicaragua April 23, where President Daniel Ortega expressed his support for Tehran's nuclear program. "All countries should be allowed to access peaceful nuclear technology and this right is not just for some countries," Ortega said. "What my country is against is using nuclear energy for military purposes, like the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II." Without explicitly saying that the phrase came from Ortega, Iran's Press TV said the Nicaraguan leader called for lifting the state of "nuclear apartheid." (Press TV, April 23)

Gov. Ulises Ruiz of Oaxaca has called upon Mexican military authorities to investigate a new guerilla group which has announced its existence the in conflicted southern state. In a message posted to the website of the Spain-based Documentation Center for Armed Movements (CDMA), the Popular Revolutionary Brigade of the South (BPRS) announced its existence and support of the demands of Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), a civil coalition demanding the ouster of Gov. Ruiz. The BPRS said that a "decadent political system" is forcing the people to turn to armed struggle, accusing Ruiz of "ignominy and unheard-of barbarity." (ADN Sureste, April 26; Xinhua, Vanguardia, April 25)

A criminal complaint has been filed in the Mexican border city of Matamoros against Luz María González Armenta, leader of Defense and Promotion of Human Rights-Emiliano Zapata (DEPRODHEZAC), weeks after she was detained at a political protest. González was arrested March 30 at a vigil outside the municipal presidency office demanding the return alive of a local youth who has been "disappeared" since late January. She was freed after ten hours, but on April 19 Matamoros Juridical Sub-Director Moisés Araujo Olmos submitted a formal complaint to the Tamaulipas state prosecutor accusing González of making death threats against him and calling for criminal charges. The complaint notes that González is a local organizer of the Zapatista rebels' "Other Campaign" civil initiative and its "Sixth Commission" organizing body, charging that "these groups have contact with arms, death, and are dedicated to any dangerous situation." It further charges that she is involved in "delinquency and drugs." González, for her part, has filed charges accusing Araujo Olmos of abuse of authority. (Special to WW4R)

Mark Kurlansky writes for the Los Angeles Times, April 26:

Seventy years ago, on April 26, 1937, at 4:40 in the afternoon when the stone-walled, medieval Basque town of Guernica was packed with peasants, shoppers and refugees for its Monday afternoon market along the riverfront, a church bell rang out. The townspeople had heard the warning before. It meant that enemy planes were approaching.

Afghanistan's parliament is poised to pass a new media law considerably reducing freedom of the press. The controversial package—proposed by the religious and cultural affairs commission of the parliament, chaired by former warlord Haji Mohammed Mohaqeq and supported by the government—will bring both private and state media under greater government control. Proposed changes include an oversight committee to will scrutinize the press for "un-Islamic" content. Complaints concerning media content will be referred directly to the supreme court, a conservative bastion.