Security forces are on high alert in India's Punjab state as Sikh religious leaders called a bundh (general strike) to protest what they say is blasphemy by a breakaway sect. Schools, markets, businesses and transportation were paralysed across Punjab May 22. Sikh protesters also clashed with police in neighboring Haryana state, leaving one dead and dozens injured. The controversy began after Gurmeet Ram Singh, leader of the multi-faith Dera Sacha Sauda, appeared in a newspaper advertisement dressed in the attire of revered Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the tenth and last Sikh guru. (Deccan Herald, AFP, May 3)

From the Global Information Network, May 21:

New York, NY — Mauritanian exiles living in New York filed a class action lawsuit today against Maaouya Ould Sidi Ahmed Taya, for the crimes committed during a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Black Mauritanians from 1989 to 1991. The lawsuit was filed in United States Federal Court by attorneys from the Refugee Defense Alliance.

Two months after the detention of a group of young people protesting the visit of President George Bush to the southern Mexican city of Merida, Yucatan state, five remain behind bars, unable to pay bail which has been set at 30,000 pesos ($3,000). The only woman detained, Victoria Texeira, has been denied bail because she is accused of violently attacking a reporter. (La Jornada, May 18)

Fourteen assassinations attributed to narco gangs were carried out May 20 in Mexico City, Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Guerrero, Sinaloa and Oaxaca. Additionally, federal army troops exchanged fire with 20 gunmen with AR-15 automatic rifles, bullet-proof vests and uniforms of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) at a checkpoint on the Apatzingán-El Alcalde road in Michoacán.

Renewed violence in Dili left one dead as Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta was sworn in May 20 as East Timor's president. UN police to fire teargas and warning shots, and arrested 42. Following the first election since independence in 2002, Ramos-Horta was sworn in to replace the former guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao on the same day that East Timor marked five years since independence. Gusmao, a close Ramos-Horta ally, did not contest the election for the largely ceremonial job of president, but will run for the more powerful post of prime minister in next month's parliamentary polls. Ramos-Horta was sworn in by the man he trounced in the May 9 election, parliament speaker Francisco Guterres from the ruling Fretilin party. The street violence was apparently between Ramos-Horta supporters and Fretilin youth. (AFP, May 21)

A ship carrying tons of UN aid has refused to leave Kenya for Somalia following the May 19 pirate attack on an aid ship. The pirates failed to seize the ship, but one crew member was killed. It was the eighth priate attack of the year off Somalia's coast. The US Navy warned vessels to stay clear of Somalia's coast. The UN World Food Program has appealed for international action to secure the waters off the coast.

On May 16, during a visit to Washington, DC, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias announced that Costa Rica will stop sending police agents to be trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), a US military training institution formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA). Critics of the school, located at Fort Benning, Georgia, charge that it has trained many of the hemisphere's worst human right abusers.

Lawyers for New York state and the US Department of Homeland Security argued during a May 15 hearing in state court in Brooklyn that Haitian paramilitary leader Emmanuel "Toto" Constant should be released early and deported quickly to Haiti. Constant has entered a guilty plea to charges involving a $1.7 million mortgage fraud scheme. Government lawyers urged state justice Abraham Gerges to sentence Constant to time served while awaiting trial, about 10 months; he would then be deported under a standing deportation order. "I have no fear to be deported to Haiti," Constant told the justice at the hearing.