According to the "Joel Sierra" Regional Human Rights Committee Foundation, "armed opposition groups" are believed responsible for a number of recent murders of civilians in Colombia's eastern department of Arauca. The killings include the Nov. 29 murder of campesinos Edgar Marin Munoz, Pablo Tulio Bautista Jimenez and Fernando Vega in the rural community of El Vigia in Tame municipality; the Dec. 10 murder of Elsa Yaneth Martinez Miranda in the rural community of Brisas de Caranal, in Arauquita municipality; and the Dec. 12 abduction and murder of campesino Hector Villamizar Becerra from the rural community of El Botalon, in Tame. On Dec. 10, 11-year-old Natalia Munoz Ramos was wounded by a bullet in the urban center of Arauquita; it is not known who was responsible for the shooting. (Fundacion Comite Regional de Derechos Humanos "Joel Sierra," Dec. 14)

On Dec. 12, troops from the Colombian Army's 12th Brigade, attached to the Sixth Division, killed campesinos Juan Bautista Munoz and Over Semanate and driver Javier Garzon in the community of La Estrella in La Montanita municipality, in the southern department of Caqueta. The troops stopped the pickup truck—property of Garzon, who had been hired by Munoz and Semanate to transport them on an errand—and shot the three men dead.

Assadullah Wafa, the new governor of Afghanistan’s restive Helmand province, vowed upon taking office Dec. 19 not to allow further peace deals like the one struck earlier this year between British NATO forces and tribal elders in Musa Qala district. "I am not pro-agreements such as in Musa Qala where there is no government control," Wafa said. The previous governor, Mohammad Daud, brokered the deal under which British forces and Taliban militants pulled out of the desert district following a request from war-weary residents. Daud, facing charges of tolerating Helmand's booming opium trade, was just pressured into resiging.

From The Independent, Dec. 15:

France yesterday defended recent fighter jet raids on towns bordering Sudan's Darfur region by claiming the aggressive action was aimed at preventing regional chaos.

The commanders of six small Mexican guerilla groups said in an interview published in the national daily La Jornada Dec. 15 that the message from the recent events in Oaxaca is that "any attempt to transform our society in a peaceful way is doomed to failure." But the commanders agreed that the "routes to social change [aren't] necessarily armed" and acknowledged the importance of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), the civil "Other Campaign" of the larger rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and the electoral struggle that formed around center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who officially lost the July 2 presidential election.

From El Universal, Dec. 18:

Over 2,000 women marched through Oaxaca City on Sunday calling for Gov. Ulises Ruiz's ouster and the immediate release of the more than 200 members of the Oaxaca People's Assembly (APPO) detained since the street battles on Nov. 25.

Our December issue featured the story (reprinted from our sibling publication Toward Freedom) "Nuclear-Free Central Asia: A Model for the Korean Peninsula?" by Rene Wadlow. It noted a real glimmer of hope in the terrifyingly bleak world situation: the repudiation of the logic of nuclear proliferation by the governments of a highly restive and militarized part of the planet. The Central Asian nuclear-free zone is bad news for the nuclear ambitions of super-powers (which seek to station atomic weapons in the region), as well as "rogue states" (which seek accomplices in their efforts to build atomic weapons) and terrorists (always happy to have more atomic weapons infrastructure to raid or pirate, especially in unstable regions). It is good news for the rest of us—the overwhelming majority of humanity. We can only hope that the two Koreas follow the Central Asian example.

From Nunatsiaq News, principal newspaper of Nunavut, the autonomous territory of the Inuit people in Canada's far north (links added):

The effort to link climate change with human rights has suffered a setback. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights won’t consider a petition that alleges that the United States government is violating the human rights of Inuit by refusing to limit its greenhouse gas emissions.