Militant group Boko Haram has forced kidnapped women and girls to marry their captors and begun using them for military tactical purposes, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Oct. 27. HRW interviewed 30 individuals who were abducted by the group between April 2013 and April 2014 and later managed to escape, and 16 others who saw the abductions. Among those interviewed were 12 girls who were among the approximately 300 abducted from a school in Chibok in April. According to the advocacy group, more than 500 women and girls have been abducted by Boko Haram since 2009, about 30 of whom were taken just last week. The group, taken from Borno state, included girls as young as 11. At least 40 women and girls were taken in Adamawa a week prior, despite government claims of a ceasefire deal. Once at the camps, the kidnapped girls are reportedly forced to perform household chores and are often exposed to rape, forced marriage and violence. One woman recounted that she was threatened with death until she converted to Islam. HRW criticized authorities for not doing enough to prevent the kidnappings, for not working to bring the perpetrators to justice, and for not providing survivors with adequate support and medical care.

A Bahrain court on Oct. 28 ordered the country's main Shi'ite opposition group, Al-Wefaq, to suspend all activities. Bahrain's Ministry of Justice filed the lawsuit in July. The ruling means that Al-Wefaq cannot operate for three months in the Gulf island kingdom. The group cannot organize rallies or press conferences, issue statements or use its offices. Earlier this month Al-Wefaq announced it would boycott Nov. 22 elections because it felt that the government did not genuinely engage in reconciliations efforts following protests to the Sunni monarchy in 2011. The group plans to appeal the decision.

A court in Saudi Arabia on Oct. 27 sentenced three lawyers to between five and eight years in prison for criticizing the justice system on the social networking website Twitter by accusing authorities of carrying out arbitrary detentions. The Saudi Press Agency  reported that the lawyers were each convicted of different crimes, including using the social media outlet to propagate against the Saudi judiciary, criticize Islamic Sharia law and interfere in the independence of the judiciary. The lawyers are also banned from using social media and traveling. The court also warned other social media users that they could face similar punishment for similar offenses and that they were being monitored.

A longstanding dispute over the privatization of the port at Limón on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast led unionized dockworkers at the port's Limón and Moín terminals to walk off the job on Oct. 22 for the second time in two years. The open-ended strike left three ships stranded at the two terminals, which handle some 80% of Costa Rica's foreign trade. Facing his first major labor crisis since he took office on May 8, President Luis Guillermo Solís, of the center-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), responded quickly. He sent some 150 police officers to take control of the terminals late on Oct. 22; 68 people were arrested in the operation. The port was reopened the next morning, with foreign contract workers under police guard. Union officials denied that the port was operating normally, and as of Oct. 25 negotiations hadn't started between the union and the government.

Protests against Mexican local governments and federal president Enrique Peña Nieto showed no signs of letting up the week of Oct. 20, nearly one month after the Sept. 26-27 killing of six people and the abduction of 43 teachers' college students in Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero. Students held a two-day national strike on Oct. 22-23 to demand the return of the missing students, who were all from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College in the Guerrero town of Ayotzinapa. Tens of thousands of students and teachers marched in a total of 18 Mexican states on the first day of the strike. The protest in Mexico City was reportedly one of the capital's largest demonstrations in recent years. The Federal District (DF, Mexico City) police estimated the crowd at 50,000, while the Los Angeles Times reported that at one point the march stretched along the broad Paseo de la Reforma from the Angel of Independence to the central Zócalo, a distance of more than four kilometers.

The Sept. 26-27 killing and abduction of several dozen students in the southwestern state of Guerrero could be creating problems for Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto's efforts to improve the country's international image and to continue the opening of its economy to private businesses. Los Angeles Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson reported on Oct. 25 that Peña's "government is clearly concerned it is losing a finely crafted domestic and international public relations campaign that emphasized major reforms of Mexico's energy sector. Publications in the US and Europe that once lavished praise on the president have turned the tables." (LA Times, Oct. 25)

At least 18 bodies were found in three mass graves near the pueblo of Tacueyó in Colombia's Cauca department over the weekend. The remains were unearthed by forensic experts from the Technical Investigations Unit (CTI) of the Fiscalía, Colombia's prosecutor general, and are believed to be victims of a guerilla massacre. The first of the graves was discovered by local campesinos while working the land, who informed the authorities. The CTI work was repeatedly interrupted by attacks from gunmen from the nearby mountains. The Tacueyó Massacre took place between 1985 and 1986, when the village was terrorized by the Ricardo Franco Front, a renegade FARC unit that broke from the guerilla army to join the rival M-19 rebels, but was repudiated by both groups.

On Oct. 3, authorities invaded the pueblo of El Reposo, in Campamento municipality of Colombia's Antioquia department, arresting three locals—including a minor and the president of the village Communal Action Junta—in connection with a supposed cocaine laboratory discovered nearby. But El Reposo's residents quickly turned the tables, rising up with their machetes, demanding that the three be liberated—and finally detaining 14 soldiers and six agents from the Fiscalía Technical Corps. The soliders and agents were held for several hours in the village schoolhouse. The government of Antioquia and Colombia's human rights ombudsman, the Defensoría del Pueblo, quickly mobilized a team to El Reposo to negotiate the release of the troops and agents. However, demands for the freedom of the three arrested locals remain outstanding, and the situation is still tense. (Semana, Bogotá, Oct. 3; Colombia Reports, La W Radio, BLU Radio,RCN, El Espectador, Bogotá, Oct. 3)