An Egyptian court of appeals on April 7 upheld the jailing of three men who co-founded the April 6 opposition movement which played a large role in the country's 2011 revolution. The ruling has been described as part of a crackdown on those opposed to the military-backed government, and critics have called it an attempt to stifle the street activism that has become common since the ousting of former president Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Sentences for the three activists, Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel, for protesting without permission and assaulting the police were handed down by a court last December. The verdict was the first under a controversial anti-protest law requiring police permission for public demonstrations. Though the men have one more chance to appeal to a higher court, analysts do not foresee the verdict being overturned. One of the defense lawyers, Ahmed Seif al-Islam, has said that he plans to challenge the ruling, and that if it cannot be overturned he will take the case to the African Court on Human and People's rights.

Sri Lanka's foreign minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris announced on April 7 that Sri Lanka would not cooperate with a UN investigation into alleged war crimes committed during the country's civil war. The UN Human Rights Council last month voted to launch an investigation into alleged violations committed by government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 towards the end of the civil war. However, speaking at a Foreign Correspondents Association forum, Peiris signaled Sri Lanka's intent not to cooperate due to concerns over legality, fairness, and conflict of interest. Peiris also expressed criticism of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay, who has previously been accused of being partial given her Tamil background.

A Colombian activist for restitution of usurped lands who was supposedly under special government protection was killed April 9. Colombia's official human rights ombudsman said Jesús Adán Quinto—who had previously reported that agents assigned to protect him had failed to show up—was killed by sicarios (hitmen) as he stepped outisde his home at Turbo in Urabá region of Antioquia department. Quinto was a leader of the displaced population from Cacarica (Riosucio muncipality, Chocó department), a self-declared "peace community" where the Afro-Colombian campesinos have been massively targetted by paramilitary forces since announcing their non-cooperation with all armed actors in 1999. Quinto's fellow activist Carmen Palencia told AFP news service that the people now occupying the lands of the displaced are hiring assassins to terrorize those those who demand return of usurped properties. She said there have been 70 people associated the peace community killed in similar circumstances since 2005. The violence-torn region of Urabá straddles the north of Antioquia and Chocó departments. (AFP, El Espectador, Justicia y Paz Colombia, April 9)

Peru's President Ollanta Humala on April 10 announced that a special police operation has resulted in the arrest of 24 operatives of the Sendero Luminoso guerilla movement. Speaking from Canada, where he was on an official visit, Humala said the detained were leaders of the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF), which advocates for prisoners held in connection with the guerilla movement. The operation, dubbed Perseo 2014, coordinated armed forces and National Police units, netting arrests in Lima and five other regions of the country. Among the detained are MOVADEF co-founders Alfredo Crespo and Manuel Fajardo, both attorneys who defended imprisoned Sendero leader Abimael Guzmán. Local media in Peru reported that also among the detained was Walter Humala, a popular folksinger and cousin of the president, who has declared himself an admirer of Guzmán. Authorities said they had proof that MOVADEF is an organ of the guerilla movement, with a police source saying that Crespo went by the code-name "Lucas" in his dealings with Sendero leaders, and Fajardo by the nom de guerre "Bartolo." (EFE, Perú21, April 10)

A court in Salto de Guairá, Paraguay, on April 9 refused to grant house arrest to five imprisoned campesinos held since 2012 despite having never been brought to trial or convicted. The denial of their petition came on the 55th day that the five prisoners have been on hunger strike. The five, Adalberto Castro, Felipe Benítez, Néstor Castro, Rubén Villalba and Amado Quintana, were arrested during the June 2012 violent eviction of peasant squatters at Curuguaty, in which 11 campesinos and five police offers lost their lives. The five, who deny their guilt in any slayings, have been tranferred against their will to a military hospital. (Prensa Latina, April 9; Radio Mundo Real, March 14)

The Aché indigenous people of Paraguay on April 8 brought suit in a court in Argentina demanding reparations for "genocide" carried out under the late Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner. The Aché are being represented by Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón, and chose to bring the case in Argentina under the doctrine of "universal jurisdiction" for crimes against humanity, asserting that justice is not possible in Paraguay's own courts. "We still feel enormous pain in our hearts and minds," said Aché leader Ceferino Kreigi Duarte in a press conference announcing the suit. "For this reason we today demand the Paraguayan state must answer for all this damage, not only to our community but to all the peoples of Paraguay who were victims of the dictatorship." Under Stroessner's 1954-1989 rule, the Aché people, who live in the riverine forests of Paraguay's east, saw their population diminish by 60% due to forced relocations, seizures of traditional lands, and abduction of the young to serve as virtual slaves in domestic labor. Most of the population plunge took place in the first five years of the 1970s. (AP via Excélsior, Mexico; EFE via Radio Caracol, Colombia, April 8)

Popular organizations in the Mexican states of Puebla, Tlaxcala and Morelos announced protests to demand the liberation of three campesinos detained in connection with opposition to a planned gas pipeline through their communities. Juan Carlos Flores Solís of the Puebla and Tlaxcala Front of Pueblos in Defense of Water and Land (FPDATPT) was arrested April 8 with Enedina Rosas Vélez, the comisariada ejidal (administrator of communal lands) at the village of San Felipe Xonacayucan, Atlixco municipality, Puebla. Later that day, Abraham Cordero Calderón, president of the Campesino Front of Ejidatarios and Small Property Owners of the Valley of Texmelucan and the Sierra Nevada, was arrested at Atlixco. The three have apparently been charged with threatening public officials and "illegal privation of liberty" in connection with protests against the Gasoducto Morelos.

Just weeks after the Mexican government signed an accord with the "community police" vigilante network in Michoacán, ostensibly bringing the anti-narco militias under control of the armed forces, it is looking more and more like they have been transformed into a lawless paramilitary force—even acting against Mexico''s federal authorities. On March 19, "community police" forces at La Placita, on Michoacán's Pacific coast, launched a blockade of the entrance of a Mexican naval outpost, apparently in protest of the disarming of 14 of their gunmen by Mexican marines stationed there. The blockade escalated in the following days, with hundreds of armed vigilantes from neighboring towns converging at the base. (El Sol de Leon, March 21)