The leader of the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), Pedro Chulin Jimenez, and at least 25 of his militants were arrested by state authorities in Chiapas, Mexico, March 8 following reports of attacks on three journalists, including Hermann Bellinghausen of the national daily La Jornada. However, Bellinghausen denied having been attacked or deprived of his freedom. Reports that the journalists were attacked and illegally detained by OPDDIC militants came following a march by the OPDDIC in Ocosingo demanding state recognition of their land claims.

Some 500 Mexican army troops and Federal Preventative Police took over the Public Security Secretariat of southern Tabasco state March 17, and arrested three high-ranking police commanders. The three officials, summarily fired upon their arrests, are part of a clique known as "La Hermandad" (The Brotherhood) that took control of state police operations during the administration of former Gov. Manuel Andrade (2000-2006). La Hermandad is suspected of ordering the hit on the new Public Security Secretariat (SSPT) director, Gen. Francisco Fernández Solís. Fernández was shot and his chauffeur killed in an ambush in the state capital Villahermosa on March 6. Federal authorities also took control of the state armory and confiscated all the weapons to conduct ballistics tests and determine if any were used in the assault on Gen. Fernández.

From the American Civil Liberties Union, March 15:

DENVER - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a complaint against three White House staffers for illegally ejecting Denver residents from a taxpayer-funded town hall with President Bush, even though they had done nothing to disrupt the event. The residents, who have been dubbed the “Denver 3” by the media, were singled out because of an anti-war bumper sticker on their car.

One of 15 immigrants arrested in March 2002 in connection with a supposed plot to attack the US Embassy in Rome with chemical agents has been awarded $133,000 for wrongful detention. Tunisian-born Abdelmoname Ben Khalifa Mansour, initially charged with being an al-Qaeda agent, is the first person to be compensated for being falsely arrested under an Italian anti-terrorism law passed shortly after 9-11. Mansour, now 37, spent a year and a half behind bars before being exonerated. The evidence centered on a red substance found in a locked cabinet, maps of Rome with the US and British embassies supposedly marked in red, a hole chipped out of a utility tunnel under the US Embassy and hours of wiretaps. The substance, described by newspapers as a cyanide compound, was potassium ferricyanide, a readily available substance used in photography. It turned out the maps had been marked to indicate the site of a restaurant in the embassy district, the hole was too small for an adult to crawl through, and the wiretapped conversations were mostly indecipherable.

Iran's representative to UNESCO, Mohammad-Reza Dehshiri, issued a protest in a letter to the UN cultural organizaiton's director general against the Warner Brothers blockbuster 300, calling it an insult to Iranian culture. Dehshiri called on UNESCO to bring the issue to the General Assembly as a "Violation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Cultural Heritage." He has sent similar letters to the heads of the Organization of Islamic Conference, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77. The Iranian Academy of Arts has also prepared a declaration asking UNESCO to take action against distribution of the film. The declaration emphasizes UNESCO's responsibility to protect the world's cultural heritage, saying it should not be silent toward the degrading of cultures through art and cinema. (IranMania, March 18; Payvand, March 16)

On March 17, Trokavec village in the Czech Republic voted its opposition to a US radar base slated to be built in a nearby military zone as part of Washington's proposed "missile shield." Seventy-two out of 90 eligible voters in the village of 100 participated. All but one authorized the village council to take all legal steps possible to stop the radar base from being built. Trokavec residents say they fear the radar would emit harmful radiation, cause real-estate prices to fall and natives to flee the area. While the vote is not binding for anyone but the village council, the results reflect public opposition to the planned radar base, which the latest nationwide poll put at 70%. On March 14, the Czech parliament rejected by one vote a bill calling for a national plebiscite on the radar base. Green and Communist proponents of the referendum pledge to try again. (DPA, March 17; Eux TV, March 14)

More than 500 Muslim villagers gathered at southern Thailand's Sabaiyoi town March 18 to demand justice after a midnight attack on an Islamic school left two young students dead and eight wounded. Students were asleep at the boarding school when assailants threw grenades and strafed the building with automatic rifle fire. Unidentified assailants also threw a grenade into a local mosque, injuring 11, on March 15, the same day suspected Islamist militants killed eight Buddhist civilians in an attack on a van. Local authorities blamed the schoool-house attack on Islamist militants, but this is disputed by local residents.

Three suicide bombers exploded trucks loaded with explosives and tanks of chlorine gas in Iraq's Anbar province March 16, killing at least two Iraqi police and sickening more than 350 people. In the first attack, a pick-up truck carrying chlorine blew up near a checkpoint northeast of Ramadi, the provincial capital, wounding a US soldier and an Iraqi civilian. In the second, a dump truck filled with chlorine exploded outside the town of Amiriya, south of Fallujah, killing two police officers. Local police and hospital officials said that as many as eight people were killed in the attacks. The perpetrators were said to be Sunni militants, even though the chlorine attacks came in an overwhelmingly Sunni region. The New York Times writes March 18: "Some local officials blamed militants linked to the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the attacks Friday and said they were part of a campaign to intimidate moderate tribes that have declared their opposition to such fundamentalist insurgent groups." Could be. But the article also states that on March 17 a bomb partly destroyed a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood. Was this also the work of Sunni extremists—or of Shi'ite militants? The Times does not venture to speculate...