From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), March 11:

Central American Solidarity Activists Dispute Department of Justice Order
Washington DC — The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), illegally targeted in the 1980's by the largest FBI Internal Security investigation of the Reagan era, has in recent months again received threatening communications from the US Department of Justice. Citing the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, a letter sent to CISPES in January questions the organization's relationship with the leftist Salvadoran political party known as the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, or FMLN. CISPES received similar inquiries in the 1980s which eventually led to an illegal FBI investigation into its activities.

A gay teenager who sought sanctuary in the UK after his boyfriend was executed by the Iranian authorities now faces the same fate after losing his legal battle for asylum. Mehdi Kazemi, 19, came to London to study English in 2004 but later discovered that his boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian police, charged with sodomy and hanged. Kazemi's father in Tehran told him by telephone that before the execution in April 2006, his boyfriend had been interrogated about sexual relations he had with other men. Kazemi filed for asylum, but late in 2007 his case was refused and he fled for The Netherlands.

German activist Martin Kramer, en route to Japan to prepare for the Hokkaido G8 summit protests, was arrested by police in the city of Vanino in the Habarovsk region of the Russian Far East March 3. He was turned over the FSB agents, in whose hands he was harshly interrogated and beaten. Martin was accused of carrying "extremist" and "secret" documents. These included archival materials from the 1920s, long since made public, that Kramer had for research purposes. Also included were a copies of the Ukrainian anarchist paper Liva-Sprava and Udar, the paper of Vladivostok's Autonomous Action. After a few hours, he was put in a car and thrown out in a strange part of the city. On March 10, arriving in Sapporo via ship from Sakhalin, he was denied entry by Japanese authorities. As of the 11th, he remained on board the ship, while local activists appealed to the authorities. (Via No-G8 Action Japan mailing list)

The US State Department's new annual human rights report accuses China of "extrajudicial killings, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners and the use of forced labor." Russia and Sudan were also especially criticized. Ten countries were named as under "unaccountable rulers [who] remained the world's most systematic human rights violators": North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan. It noted improvements in Mauritania, Ghana, Morocco and Haiti, but little or no progress in Nepal, Russia, Georgia Kyrghyzstan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan or Iraq. (AlJazeera, March 11)

A Chinese passenger jet en route to Beijing from the Xinjiang region (known as Uighurstan or East Turkestan to its indigenous inhabitants, the Turkic and Muslim Uighur people) was forced to make an emergency landing March 7 after the flight crew prevented at least two passengers from trying to crash the airplane, state media reported. Meanwhile, Chinese officials announced that a police raid in January against an alleged terrorist group in Xinjiang had uncovered materials that proved the group was plotting an attack on the upcoming Beijing Olympics. (IHT, March 9)

Kenya has largely disappeared from the headlines, and what is reported generally has an optimistic slant—a new power-sharing accord is hoped to end the violence. Meanwhile, the situation seems to be escalating to open war. On March 10, the armed forces reportedly opened fire and launched aerial bombing raids with helicopter gunships on the Sabaot Land Defense Forces (SLDF) at Mount Elgon in the west of the country. The SLDF is a local militia representing the Sabaot clan of the Kalenjin community, which says it seeks to reclaim traditional lands and is accused of a massacre last week in which 13 people were burned alive or hacked to death. (BBC, March 11; AP, March 10)

The Israeli government March 9 approved construction of a 330-unit housing project in Givat Zeev, a West Bank settlement already home to about 10,000 settlers. The project began in 1999 but was suspended when the second Intifada broke out the following year. Palestinian official Saeb Erekat called the project "another slap in the face of the peace process." Defending the decision, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said: "We've said all along that there won't be a complete freeze in construction in the large settlement blocks. We've been very consistent and upfront."

A town meeting in Brattleboro, VT, voted 2,012-1,795 March 4 to approve a measure calling on the town's police to arrest and indict Bush and Cheney if they enter the municipality. The smaller village of Marlboro passed a similar measure 43-25, with three abstaining. The Brattleboro measure read: "Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities, and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police, pursuant to the above mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecuted or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?" (Democratic Underground, March 4)