Daily Report

WHY WE FIGHT

A driver's license is a license to kill. James Bond has nothing on NYC auxiliary cops. From MyFoxNY, July 3:

Officer Identified In Police Van Incident
The driver of the auxiliary police van who accidentally hit a [sic] killed a pedestrian on Friday has been identified.

Haiti: activists tell UN to pay for cholera epidemic

During the last week of June several Haitian social organizations called on the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) to pay reparations to the victims of a cholera epidemic that appeared to originate at the international occupation force's base near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau. Representatives of Haitian Women's Solidarity (SOFA), the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA) and other groups said MINUSTAH should pay out to the Haitian people 25% to 30% of its annual operating budget of $853 million. SOFA made similar demands in January. The epidemic, which started in October, has killed some 5,500 people to date and sickened about 300,000. (AlterPresse, Haiti, July 1)

Latin America: Pride marches focus on marriage, violence

Chileans celebrated LGBT Pride in Santiago on June 25 with a march from the central Plaza Italia to the La Moneda presidential palace. Organizers said 30,000 people joined the march, while the police gave a crowd estimate of 12,000. Participants carried signs with such slogans as: "Marriage and civil union law for all couples" and "Antidiscrimination law for everyone." The march came one day after New York became the largest state in the US to allow same-sex marriage. Rightwing president Sebastián Piñera announced on May 28 that he would send Congress a proposal for a law to legalize civil unions for the country's more than two million couples, including same-sex couples, but he insisted that the law wouldn't permit same-sex marriage. Chilean LGBT activists are pushing for full marriage equality. (AFP, June 25, via Terra.com)

Mexico: new mass kidnapping of immigrants reported

At least five Central American immigrants were forcibly removed from a freight train by about 10 armed men wearing hoods on June 24 near the village of Medias Aguas in the east central Mexican state of Veracruz, according to two immigrants who managed to escape. The number of people kidnapped could be as high as 80, according to the well-known immigrant rights activist Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, coordinator of the Brother and Sister Migrants on the Road (Hermanos en el Camino) shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec in the southern state of Oaxaca. Solalinde reported the kidnappings to the authorities after talking to the two witnesses.

Chile: education protests continue to grow

With chants of "An educated people will never be deceived" and "We want a free, quality education," tens of thousands of Chilean students, parents and teachers took to the streets on June 30 in the latest protest against the privatized education system set up under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Giorgio Jackson, president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC), estimated that 200,000 people took part in the demonstration in Santiago, while Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) president Camila Vallejo put the number at more than 300,000. By most accounts the Santiago protest was twice the size of a June 16 march that local media had called the largest since the return of democracy 21 years ago.

Colombia: paramilitaries kill five in Zenú community

On June 30, Colombian Ombudsperson (Defensor del Pueblo) Volmar Pérez Ortiz condemned the killings of five Zenú indigenous people in the Lower Cauca region in the northeast of Antioquia department. According to information provided to the Ombudsperson's Office by the Indigenous Organization of Antioquia (OIA), the murders took place June 24-26 in the Zenú communities of La 18 and La Unión-Pato in Zaragoza municipality.

Israel restricts al-Aqsa mosque access after Jerusalem protests

Israeli police on July 1 limited access to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock for Friday prayers in a precautionary measure a day after clashes in the Old City. “This Friday we are preventing access to the plaza for Muslim men less than 45 years old,” a police spokesperson said, although she denied the restriction was linked to the previous night’s violence. The spokesperson added police have been “deployed in force” around East Jerusalem as security forces prepare for the possibility of new clashes with Palestinians. In the previous day's unrest, a Palestinian was wounded when an Israeli border guard opened fire to disperse protesters who were throwing stones and reportedly Molotov cocktails at the entrance to Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. (AP, July 1)

Colombia: indigenous leader killed in "false positive" attack

The Colombian army this week admitted that a man killed weeks earlier in the eastern department of Arauca—originally reported to be a "financial leader" of the FARC guerillas, identified by the alias "Humberto Peroza Wampiare"—was actually a leader of a local indigenous community, and a noncombatant. The fallen man is now identified as a member of the cabildo (community council) of the resguardo (indigenous reserve) of La Vorágine, of the Hitnu people, located near La Ilusión pueblo, Arauca municipality. Col. Óscar Cardona originally reported the death, which occurred June 10 at Santa Ana vereda (hamlet), Arauquita municipality, as that of a guerilla killed in combat. The army now calls this a "military error."

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