Spanish Jesuit missionary José María Korta, 81, a founder of the Indigenous University of Venezuela (UIV), began a public hunger strike this week at the gates of the National Assembly building in Caracas, to demand liberty for three Yukpa indigenous leaders charged in the killing of two people during a gunfight last year. Korta says the three, Sabino Romero, Olegario Romero and Alexánder Fernández, have been falsely accused because of their efforts to defend traditional Yukpa lands. Korta is joined in the hunger strike by Ramón Sanare, agro-ecology director at the UIV. (Ultimas Noticias, Oct. 23; El Universal, Caracas, Oct. 21)

Most of the 33 British passengers on May's ill-fated aid flotilla to Gaza have asked to give oral testimony to the Turkel Commission to Examine the Maritime Incident, a lawyer acting on their behalf said yesterday. The group say they are resisting what they see as efforts by the commission, appointed by the Israeli government, to belittle their evidence by having them submit only very basic information about their experiences. Daniel Machover, who is representing 29 of the passengers, said the Israeli Foreign Ministry approached the British Foreign Office Oct. 21 and gave them a four-day deadline to gather basic information to be passed on to the commission. Machover said the passengers see the rushed request as a "calculated snub...not a genuine effort to welcome their evidence." (Ha'aretz, Oct. 22)

Haitian prison officers are found to have killed 12 detainees "deliberately and without justification," using "inappropriate, abusive and disproportionate force" during a Jan. 19 prison uprising, according to an independent commission, the New York Times reported Oct. 21. The Times obtained an exclusive copy of the commission's report, which said the incident involved "grave violations of human rights." The uprising occurred just days after Haiti was hit with a devastating earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left some one million homeless.

Israel has started building at least 544 apartments since a 10-month construction freeze expired late last month. Palestinians charge that construction in the settlements is aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the issue has brought recently renewed US-brokered peace talks to a halt. In a statement, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace Robert Serry called the construction activity "alarming," saying it is "illegal under international law" and "will only further undermine trust."

A US soldier is being held in connection with the fatal shooting on Oct. 17 of a Taliban detainee, who was found dead in a holding cell in Kandahar province. The US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) and Afghan officials have launched separate investigations into the death. Officials stated that detainee, Mullah Muhibullah, was a senior leader of the Taliban network in Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Arghandab is currently the focus of a major US-led military offensive to dislodge the Taliban from its strategic stronghold in Kandahar province. Mullah Muhibullah was detained during a Taliban operation the day before he was killed.

Representatives of social and humanitarian organizations in Chile marked 518 years since the arrival of European colonizer Christopher Columbus by marching on Oct. 12 in the southern Araucanía region in solidarity with Chile's indigenous peoples. About 5,000 people had held a similar solidarity march in Santiago the day before. The marches had a special focus on the situation of the Mapuche, Chile's largest indigenous group, and a liquids-only hunger strike by Mapuche prisoners that ended on Oct. 8 after more than 80 days. A group of the prisoners released a communiqué on Oct. 12 calling on the government to fulfill the promises it made to them in negotiations to end the hunger strike. "A new process of struggle will begin," the prisoners wrote. (Prensa Latina, Oct. 12)

While the world media focused on the successful rescue of 33 Chilean miners on Oct. 12 and 13—69 days after they had been trapped by a collapse in the San José gold and copper mine in the northern Atacama region, Chilean union leaders charged that persistent problems with safety in the country's mines were being downplayed.

On Oct. 15 about 60 Haitians protested an extension of the mandate for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) by blocking the entrance to the mission's main logistics base near the Port-au-Prince airport. The Associated Press reported that the protesters, many of them people left homeless by a major earthquake on Jan. 12, spray-painted slogans on cars and burned the Brazilian flag; Brazilian troops lead the joint military-police mission, which has occupied Haiti since June 2004.