A prominent Cambodian radio broadcaster and rights activist was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on Oct. 1 after being convicted of insurrection and inciting rebellion against the state. Mam Sonando, 71, runs the independent Beehive radio station and has been an outspoken critic of the Cambodian government. He was arrested in July on accusations of being involved in a plot to incite villagers in eastern Kratie to rebel against the Cambodian government in an effort to establish an autonomous region in the province. The court held that Sonando had been instrumental in inciting villagers in May to form their own state in the eastern province. An additional 13 people were convicted on similar indictments. Rights groups have denounced the charges and Sonando's supporters say he is being persecuted for criticizing the government. Several hundred people assembled outside the court in support of the rights activist as his sentence was being handed down. The Phnom Penh court also fined Sonando 10 million riel ($2,500). His wife has indicated that he plans to appeal the sentence.

On Oct. 1, the indigenous village of San Juan Bautista de Cañaris in Peru's northern region of Lambayeque announced the results of a consulta, or community consultation, on the proposed Cañariaco Norte open-pit copper mine, saying 1,896 members of the pueblo of some 4,000 voted by 95% to reject it. The results were immediately forwarded to the Energy and Mines Ministry (MINEM). Vancouver-based Candente Copper, which hopes to develop the project, issued a statement rejecting the consulta, saying the community had already approved the project in a "general assembly" held on July 8. The statement noted that the "general assembly" has been called for judicial authorities after Cristobal Barrios, the president of the Cañaris Campesino Community, had refused to convene it. The statement said the "general assembly" had been confirmed as "legally binding" by MINEM, and charged that Barrios had called the consulta "unilaterally" in violation of Peru's General Law of Campesino Communities (PDF). Cañaris community representatives, in turn, noted that more residents participated in the consulta than in the "general assembly," and insisted that the new vote represents the will of the community. (Marketwire Canada, Bloomberg, Oct. 2; El Comercio via Gato Encerrado, Diario Correo, Oct. 1)

A series of demonstrations that started in Cap-Haïtien, North department, on Sept. 12 to protest rising food prices and alleged corruption in the government of Haitian president Michel Martelly continued in various cities during the last week of September. Several hundred students demonstrated in Gonaïves, the main city in the northwestern Artibonite department, on Sept. 24 to protest Education Minister Vaneur Pierre's visit to the Public University of the Artibonite at Gonaïves (UPAG). Pierre had to leave the campus; his vehicle remained in the control of student protesters for several hours. Chanting slogans against the Martelly government, the students then built barricades in the Bigot neighborhood in the south of the city and tied up traffic for several hours. (AlterPresse, Haiti, Sept. 25)

Unidentified assailants gunned down Eduardo Manuel Díaz Mazariegos, a prosecutor with the Honduran Public Ministry, shortly before noon on Sept. 24 near his office in Choluteca, the capital of the southern department of Choluteca. Díaz Mazariegos had worked on human rights cases as well as criminal cases for the ministry. He was the seventh Honduran prosecutor murdered since 1994, and his killing came less than two full days after the similar murder of Antonio Trejo Cabrera, an activist private attorney who represented a campesino collective in a dispute over land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras. (La Tribuna, Tegucigalpa, Sept. 24; EFE, Sept. 25, via Univision)

Members of the Huilliche indigenous group blocked the highway between Valdivia and Paillaco in southern Chile's Los Ríos region the morning of Sept. 28, burning rubbish and setting up barricades to protest a Sept. 21 Supreme Court decision denying them access to a sacred site. A communiqué from an organization calling itself the Huilliche Aynil Leufu Mapu Mo Resistance claimed responsibility for the action, which was also in support of a hunger strike that five Mapuche prisoners in Angol, Araucanía region, began on Aug. 27. The Huilliche are a sub-group of the Mapuche, the largest indigenous group in Chile.

After a 14-hour session, the Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress voted in the early morning of Sept. 29 to approve major changes to the 1970 Federal Labor Law (LFT). The 346-60 vote in the 500-member Chamber was pushed through by an alliance of the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). There was one abstention, and many deputies from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) walked out of the session in protest before the vote. The measure, which was passed under a special "fast-track" provision, now goes to the Senate, which must act on it within 30 days.

Canadian citizen Omar Khadr was transferred to Canada from Guantánamo Bay early Sept. 30 to serve out the rest of his prison sentence under the authority of the Correctional Service of Canada. Khadr pleaded guilty to murdering US Sergeant First Class Christoper Speer, an Army medic, as well as charges of conspiracy and spying, material support of a terrorist group and attempted murder. He was originally sentenced to eight years in 2010 on top of the eight years he had already spent in prison. The rest of his sentence and future parole hearings, however, will now be handled by Canadian authorities according to Canadian law.

Peru's Supreme Court on Sept. 26 ruled in favor of the Shipibo and Ese'Eja indigenous community of Tres Islas in the southern Amazon basin region of Madre de Dios, finding that the rainforest dwellers have the right to block a road that illegal miners and timber cutters use to enter their territory. Indigenous organizations hailed the ruling as an important precedent for peoples trying to halt mining, logging or oil drilling on their lands. "We think this will serve as an example for other indigenous groups to take their cases to the top court," said Jaime Tapullima Pashanase, president of the Ethnic Council of Kechwa Peoples of the Amazon (CEPKA). Added Julio Ibañez Moreno, a lawyer for Peru's trans-Amazonian alliance AIDESEP: "I consider this ruling very important for indigenous communities. This is an advance in terms of the rights they have been demanding."