From Friends of Brad Will, March 1:

Friends of Murdered US Journalist in DC Advocate for Investigation and End to Impunity

The Friends of Brad Will attended the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere Oversight Hearing Overview of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America on March 1st to press for the appropriate investigation of the murder of US journalist Brad Will in Oaxaca, Mexico in October of 2006. The Friends of Brad Will is a national network working with the Will family for justice and accountability in his murder, and for an end to the impunity of human rights violations in Oaxaca, Mexico.

For the second time in eight days Feb. 26, teachers from Sections 22 and 59 of the National Education Workers Syndicate (SNTE) clashed over control of Technical Secondary School 172 at Benito Juárez, San Pedro Pochutla municipality, on the coast of southern Mexico's conflicted Oaxaca state. Eleven were injured on both sides, two seriously. Despite an accord to allow the same teachers from the last semester back in regardless of their union affiliation, Section 59 teachers attemped to impede access to Section 22 teachers, sparking the clash. Some 275 schools around the state are said to be similarly divided. (La Jornada, Feb. 27)

Diego Arcos Meneses, an indigenous Chol Maya campesino, has been arrested by Chiapas state police and charged with murder in connection with November's massacre at the rainforest settlement of Viejo Velasco. The Chol campesino organization Xinich protests his innocence. The Xinich statement says Arcos Meneses, 42, is a health promoter and Jesuit "catechist" (lay worker) at the settlement of Nuevo Tila, Ocosingo municipality. "Regrettably in our country such human gestures can be dangerous: solidarity is criminalized while repression walks with impunity," says Xinich, the group believed by rights observers to have actually been targeted in the attack. (Xinich statement, March 4)

On Feb. 26 the Center for Economic and Political Investigations of Community Action (CIEPAC), a non-governmental organization based in San Cristobal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, received a note reading: "Enjoy your last day. We will kill you I am looking for you and now we have found you." This followed a series of incidents of surveillance and harassment directed at CIEPAC's members over several months. The organization is asking "national and international organized groups in solidarity [to] maintain your vigilance in anticipation of events that might occur shortly, continue your solidarity with social movements in Mexico, and denounce the continuous violations to human rights that are affecting civil society in this country." (CIEPAC bulletin, Feb. 26)

Armed with clubs, rocks and machetes, at least 3,000 Nahuatl indigenous people blocked roads in Soledad Atzompa municipality in the central eastern Mexican state of Veracruz on Feb. 26 and 27 to demand the removal of the military from the 14 municipalities in the Sierra de Zongolica. They also demanded social services and materials for the villages in the region, and punishment for four soldiers accused of the rape of 73-year-old Ernestina Ascension Rosario, who died on Feb. 26 of the injuries she sustained in the assault. In the Feb. 27 demonstration the protesters detained state public safety secretary Juan Manuel Orozco, state prosecutor Emeterio Lopez and other officials for a half hour and damaged their vehicles.

A petition from the Organization of Women's Liberation in Iran (OWLI):

To: all progressive organizations and all freedom-loving people
Your help is urgently needed to release 36 women activists in Tehran!

4th March 2007, a gathering of women activists in front of the Engelab Court, Tehran, was brutally attacked and 36 women were arrested. The gathering was called to protest against the arrest and trial of 5 women activists who were jailed in connection with protests on 22 Xordad [last June] in Haft Tir Square. Their “crime” was to stage a gathering “against the country’s security.” The 5 arrested women activists are Parvin Ardalan, Susan Tahmasbi, Shahla Entesari, and Fariba Davoodi Mohajer.

A statement from the Organization of Women's Liberation in Iran (OWLI):

Azar Majedi in a round table discussion with BBC Radio Scotland:
Military attack on Iran is a human and environmental tragedy in the region!

On 25 February 2007, Azar Majedi, the Chairperson of Organisation for Women’s Liberation, took part in a round table discussion with BBC Radio Scotland Sunday Live programme, about the possible military attack on Iran by USA. The other participant was Mr. Douglas Mary, supporter of New Conservatism and Mr. Bush.

A statement from the international women's rights group MADRE:

On February 26, 2007, Houzan Mahmoud, an international representative of MADRE's sister organization, the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, received an e-mail signed by Ansar al-Islam, the notoriously brutal jihadist group based in Kurdistan/Iraq.