UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Sept. 21 suggested a need for UN intervention in Belarus and demanded the regime free non-violent political prisoners. Although Belarus is an active member of the UN and has ratified many of its human rights policies, Pillay noted a sharp deterioration in human rights since the 2010 disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power for 17 years since his 1994 election. Pillay said that citizens have been discouraged from protesting and have not received fair trials, accusing the administration of "a policy of harassment against non-governmental organizations and human rights defenders." The report also cited Belarus as the only European nation to still enforce the death penalty. Pillay called for an investigation into alleged abuses of the judicial system and the acceptance of an Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) mission to Belarus. In response, ambassador Mikhail Khvostov for Belarus said his country disagrees on what constitutes a peaceful demonstration, and that Belarus is committed to human rights.

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Sept. 21 imposed Kingpin Act sanctions on four Colombian nationals and 12 companies said to be linked to Joaquín Guzmán Loera AKA "El Chapo"—head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán faces charges in the US, but remains at large. (WSJ Corruption Currents blog, Sept. 20) The move comes amid increasing charges that US law enforcement—as well as the Mexican government—is favoring the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico's bloody narco wars.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan on Sept. 19 lifted an injunction on damages levied against US oil giant Chevron, making the company potentially liable for $8.6 billion in compensation to Ecuadoran citizens for an oil spill in the 1990s. The award will not be granted immediately, pending appeals in Ecuador and a decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Chevron responded by insisting it is the victim of fraud: "There is no legitimate evidence supporting any finding of liability against Chevron because Texaco Petroleum Company cleaned up its share of environmental impacts in Ecuador and the remaining impacts are the responsibility of the government of Ecuador and its state-owned oil company, Petroecuador." Jim Tyrrell, attorney for the Ecuadorans, countered: "We are very excited that the court has reached this decision. It represents a triumph of the rule of law over the sensationalism created by Chevron's PR department." (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 20)

Gunmen in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan attacked a bus carrying Shi'ite pilgrims to Iran on Sept. 20, killing at least 25. The driver of the bus told police that some 10 assailants ordered the pilgrims off the bus and then opened fire on them. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an extremist Sunni group believed to be responsible for previous attacks on Shi'ites in Baluchistan, claimed responsibility. The Shi'ites of Baluchistan are mostly members of the Hazara ethnic minority (which was the target of a campaign of genocide by the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in the 1990s).

It is nonetheless sickening for being de rigueur to hear Barack Obama mourning the death of the war criminal Burhanuddin Rabbani as a "tragic loss." Rabbani had recently been appointed to lead a "High Peace Council" to start negotiations with the Taliban. He was killed at his home in Kabul by a visitor with explosives hidden in his turban. President Hamid Karzai, at the start of talks with Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, said Rabbani's death "will not deter us" from continuing the quest for peace. (Reuters, LAT, Sept. 20) Rabbani ruled Afghanistan from 1992 until the Taliban take-over of '96, and then led the Northern Alliance insurgency. He has been perceived as the real power behind President Karzai. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) decried Rabbani as leader of the "Northern Alliance mafia" made up of "millionaire rapists busy in the opium trade under the very nose of the US troops."

By a vote of two to one, on Sept. 13 a three-judge panel in Buenos Aires declared former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) innocent of involvement in the government's clandestine sales of arms to Ecuador and Croatia from 1991 to 1995. The judges also acquitted former defense minister Oscar Camilión, former air force head Brig. Gen. Juan Paulik, Menem's former brother-in-law Emir Yoma, and 14 other defendants. Prosecutor Mariano Borinsky, who had asked for an eight-year prison term for Menem, said his office would appeal the decision, although he himself is leaving his post to accept a judgeship.

Honduran authorities say armed rebels killed a police agent and a soldier in a military-police patrol the afternoon of Sept. 16 in the Lower Aguán Valley, the site of numerous violent struggles over land over the past two years. According to Gen. René Osorio Canales, head of the Armed Forces Joint General Staff, the soldiers and police agents were in two vehicles carrying out a routine patrol at the La Consentida estate, in Sonaguera municipality in the northern department of Colón, when they were ambushed by "people with high-caliber weapons, people who have dedicated themselves to guerrilla activities."

Leaders of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) reached an agreement with Mexico's federal government on Sept. 13 that ended a sit-in the unionists had been holding in Mexico City's main plaza, the Zócalo, since March. In exchange for stopping the protest, the union received a pledge that the authorities would negotiate a way for some 16,720 laid-off members to return to work. The government also agreed to free up union funds worth 21 million pesos (about $1.6 million) that it had frozen and to review the cases of SME members arrested in the two years of struggle between the authorities and the unionists.