In a new report, Human Rights Watch charges that Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) is adept at documenting abuses—but has failed to prevent them. Said HRW Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco: "While it does a decent job documenting abuses and identifying problems, it doesn't take crucial steps needed to bring about change. The (commission) should be a catalyst for human rights progress, not merely a chronicler of the status quo." The 128-page report focuses on the police crackdown on peasant protesters at Atenco village, the rapes and killings of villagers by troops in Michoacán and Coahuila states, and the unsolved murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez. Too often, the report found, the commission merely recommend fixes to government agencies and then failed to check if they were ever implemented. The study found that backroom deals remain the norm. (Houston Chronicle, Feb. 13)

On Feb. 11, ski-masked gunmen stopped a bus on the road between San Cristobal de Las Casas and Ocosingo in the conflicted southern Mexican state of Chiapas, threatening passengers and robbing them of cameras, cell phones, ID documents and other possessions. The assault comes days after local Zapatista supporters were illegally detained by members of the OPDDIC paramilitary group, who accused them of being bandits. (La Jornada, Feb. 12) That same day, seven OPDDIC militants, including leaders Carlos Moreno Hernández and Pedro Chulín Jiménez, were freed from prison on the orders of a federal judge, who issued an amparo protecting them from arrest or prosecution. (La Jornada, Feb. 12)

Danish newspapers this week reprinted the notorious cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb for a turban, a day after three people were arrested for allegedly plotting to kill the artist who drew it, Kurt Westergaard, a 73-year-old illustrator with the daily Jyllands-Posten. Several other newspapers, including Politiken, Berlingske Tidende and the Ekstra Bladet tabloid, also decided to run the picture, in an act of defiance to intimidation. At least three newspapers in Sweden, Holland and Spain also reprinted the cartoon. "We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend," Copenhagen's Berlingske Tidende said. "Regardless of whether Jyllands-Posten at the time used freedom of speech unwisely and with damaging consequences, the paper deserves unconditional solidarity when it is threatened with terror."

Rival mass tributes were held in Beirut Feb. 14 despite bad weather to commemorate the third anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and the Feb. 12 car-bomb slaying of senior Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed his followers at the Mughniyeh funeral: "Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, then let the whole world listen: Let this war be open." (Lebanon Daily Star, Feb. 15) CNN news anchor Jim Clancy theorizes that Mughniyeh, who was on the US "Most Wanted Terrorists" list, faked his own death. (CNN, Feb. 14)

From the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), Feb. 12:

Once Again US Troops Desperately Attempt to Suppress the Voice of Freedom in Iraq
The occupying troops have made another attempt to eliminate the voice of freedom from Iraq by raiding the IFC headquarters in Baghdad today at 2:00 AM, when they forced themselves in, verbally and physically assaulted the guards and stood them out in the rain for several hours.

Mindanao anarchists

In Davao City, on the conflicted Philippine island of Mindanao, a group of nonviolent anarchists known as the "As A Whole" Collective have for the past two years been feeding homeless youth and the elderly as a local Food Not Bombs chapter, as well as holding rallies against corporate exploitation, and were part of a successful activist campaign that resulted in a complete ban of aerial pesticide spraying on banana plantations. The group has now established a space called Saydee's Kitchen, from which they are offering free meals twice a week, feeding up to 100 youth and elderly. While local markets are donating food, Saydee's Kitchen is requesting donations of stoves, large cooking pans and kitchen utensils, or money to purchase these items.

Lorenzo Fernández Ortega, a 38-year-old bricklayer and member of the Organization of the Indigenous Mepha'a People (OPIM), was stabbed to death Feb. 10 in Ayutla de los Libres, a village in the conflicted Mexican state of Guerrro. The group had been protesting a campaign of forced sterilizations of indigenous women in the region, and charged that the federal army is establishing paramilitary groups which have carried out recent attacks on indigenous activists. OPIM's statement on the murder said, "our compañero Lorenzo was assassinated by paramilitaries that work for the 48th Infantry Battalion of the Mexican Army, headquartered at Cruz Grande." (OPIM statement via Zapateando; La Jornada, Feb. 12)

From the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), Feb. 13:

El Salvador's Attorney General last Friday [Feb. 8] requested that charges of "acts of terrorism" be dropped against 13 peaceful protesters arrested at a demonstration against water privatization last July in the town of Suchitoto. After more than six months of investigation into the events of July 2, 2007, the Salvadoran government was unable to substantiate its original terrorism accusations, which carried a potential sentence of up to 60 years in prison. The charges fell under the jurisdiction of El Salvador's 2006 "Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism," which was championed by the US Embassy in San Salvador. Human rights experts in El Salvador and on the international level uniformly concluded that the Suchitoto protest was lawful and denounced the terrorism charges.