Colombian officials announced they will consider seeking the extradition of senior executives of Chiquita Brands International after the company pleaded guilty in US federal court to making payments to paramilitary groups. Chiquita, one of the world's top banana producers, agreed to pay a fine of $25 million last week to the US Justice Department to settle the case. Chiquita admitted that from 1997 to 2004, its Colombia subsidiary paid $1.7 million to the paramilitaies. Chiquita said it voluntarily informed the Justice Department of its payments to the paramilitary groups in 2003, after their classification as terrorist organizations. The company said that the payments had been motivated by concern for the safety of employees, and that similar payments had been made to left-wing guerillas.

The annual US State Department report on global human rights, released March 6, notes improvements in the rghts climate in Mexico but says a "culture of impunity and corruption" persists. (La Jornada, March 7)

On March 14, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) handed a report to the Senate demanding that killings and other rights abuses in the conflicted southern state of Oaxaca over the past months be punished. "There were threats, persecution, physical aggression and acts of intimidation," the report says. "They should be cleared up and those responsible presented to the courts."

Chiapas state authorities have declared a "Huitepec-Alcanfores Natural Protected Area" in exactly the location where a "Zapatista Communitarian Ecological Reserve" had been declared weeks earlier. The Zapatistas say the Huitepec area, just outside the highland city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, is coveted by corporate interests for its resources—both its timber and its watershed, for a local Coca-Cola bottling plant. The local environmental group Maderas del Pueblo (Timber for the People) called the government's move a "provocation." (La Jornada, Frayba, March 14; Narco News, March 13)

The leader of the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), Pedro Chulin Jimenez, and at least 25 of his militants were arrested by state authorities in Chiapas, Mexico, March 8 following reports of attacks on three journalists, including Hermann Bellinghausen of the national daily La Jornada. However, Bellinghausen denied having been attacked or deprived of his freedom. Reports that the journalists were attacked and illegally detained by OPDDIC militants came following a march by the OPDDIC in Ocosingo demanding state recognition of their land claims.

One of 15 immigrants arrested in March 2002 in connection with a supposed plot to attack the US Embassy in Rome with chemical agents has been awarded $133,000 for wrongful detention. Tunisian-born Abdelmoname Ben Khalifa Mansour, initially charged with being an al-Qaeda agent, is the first person to be compensated for being falsely arrested under an Italian anti-terrorism law passed shortly after 9-11. Mansour, now 37, spent a year and a half behind bars before being exonerated. The evidence centered on a red substance found in a locked cabinet, maps of Rome with the US and British embassies supposedly marked in red, a hole chipped out of a utility tunnel under the US Embassy and hours of wiretaps. The substance, described by newspapers as a cyanide compound, was potassium ferricyanide, a readily available substance used in photography. It turned out the maps had been marked to indicate the site of a restaurant in the embassy district, the hole was too small for an adult to crawl through, and the wiretapped conversations were mostly indecipherable.

Iran's representative to UNESCO, Mohammad-Reza Dehshiri, issued a protest in a letter to the UN cultural organizaiton's director general against the Warner Brothers blockbuster 300, calling it an insult to Iranian culture. Dehshiri called on UNESCO to bring the issue to the General Assembly as a "Violation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage." He has sent similar letters to the heads of the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77. The Iranian Academy of Arts has also prepared a declaration asking UNESCO to take action against distribution of the film. The declaration emphasizes UNESCO's responsibility to protect the world's cultural heritage, saying it should not be silent toward the degrading of cultures through art and cinema. (IranMania, March 18; Payvand, March 16)

On March 17, Trokavec village in the Czech Republic voted its opposition to a US radar base slated to be built in a nearby military zone as part of Washington's proposed "missile shield." Seventy-two out of 90 eligible voters in the village of 100 participated. All but one authorized the village council to take all legal steps possible to stop the radar base from being built. Trokavec residents say they fear the radar would emit harmful radiation, cause real-estate prices to fall and natives to flee the area. While the vote is not binding for anyone but the village council, the results reflect public opposition to the planned radar base, which the latest nationwide poll put at 70%. On March 14, the Czech parliament rejected by one vote a bill calling for a national plebiscite on the radar base. Green and Communist proponents of the referendum pledge to try again. (DPA, March 17; Eux TV, March 14)