At least five Central American immigrants were forcibly removed from a freight train by about 10 armed men wearing hoods on June 24 near the village of Medias Aguas in the east central Mexican state of Veracruz, according to two immigrants who managed to escape. The number of people kidnapped could be as high as 80, according to the well-known immigrant rights activist Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, coordinator of the Brother and Sister Migrants on the Road (Hermanos en el Camino) shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec in the southern state of Oaxaca. Solalinde reported the kidnappings to the authorities after talking to the two witnesses.

With chants of "An educated people will never be deceived" and "We want a free, quality education," tens of thousands of Chilean students, parents and teachers took to the streets on June 30 in the latest protest against the privatized education system set up under the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Giorgio Jackson, president of the Federation of Catholic University Students (FEUC), estimated that 200,000 people took part in the demonstration in Santiago, while Federation of University of Chile Students (FECH) president Camila Vallejo put the number at more than 300,000. By most accounts the Santiago protest was twice the size of a June 16 march that local media had called the largest since the return of democracy 21 years ago.

On June 30, Colombian Ombudsperson (Defensor del Pueblo) Volmar Pérez Ortiz condemned the killings of five Zenú indigenous people in the Lower Cauca region in the northeast of Antioquia department. According to information provided to the Ombudsperson's Office by the Indigenous Organization of Antioquia (OIA), the murders took place June 24-26 in the Zenú communities of La 18 and La Unión-Pato in Zaragoza municipality.

Israeli police on July 1 limited access to Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock for Friday prayers in a precautionary measure a day after clashes in the Old City. “This Friday we are preventing access to the plaza for Muslim men less than 45 years old,” a police spokesperson said, although she denied the restriction was linked to the previous night’s violence. The spokesperson added police have been “deployed in force” around East Jerusalem as security forces prepare for the possibility of new clashes with Palestinians. In the previous day's unrest, a Palestinian was wounded when an Israeli border guard opened fire to disperse protesters who were throwing stones and reportedly Molotov cocktails at the entrance to Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. (AP, July 1)

The Colombian army this week admitted that a man killed weeks earlier in the eastern department of Arauca—originally reported to be a "financial leader" of the FARC guerillas, identified by the alias "Humberto Peroza Wampiare"—was actually a leader of a local indigenous community, and a noncombatant. The fallen man is now identified as a member of the cabildo (community council) of the resguardo (indigenous reserve) of La Vorágine, of the Hitnu people, located near La Ilusión pueblo, Arauca municipality. Col. Óscar Cardona originally reported the death, which occurred June 10 at Santa Ana vereda (hamlet), Arauquita municipality, as that of a guerilla killed in combat. The army now calls this a "military error."

Some 40 exiled Tibetans have been arrested in Nepal over the past week, in a crackdown against refugees attempting to celebrate the Buddhist religious festival of Saka Dawa in the capital Kathmandu. Hundreds of Tibetan refugees gathered to celebrate Saka Dawa; the birthday of Buddha, in the capital Kathmandu. The festivities, which were repeatedly shut down by the police, included candle-light vigils for Tibetans recently detained in a new wave of protests within the People's Republic of China.

Thousands of protesters again took to the streets of Morocco on July 3 to push for democratic reforms despite voter approval two days earlier of a constitutional reform that curbs the near-absolute powers of King Mohammed VI. More than 5,000 protesters rallied in Morocco's main economic hub Casablanca, chanting "For Dignity and Freedom!" The February 20 Movement, which has organized weeks of demonstrations calling for reforms in the Arab world's oldest reigning monarchy, denounced the reform as inadequate and called its reported 98% approval a sham.

Hundreds of debt-ridden small merchants and farmers in northern Nicaragua launched a human blockade on the main road between the Caribbean coast and the capital at Río Blanco municipality, Matagalpa department, on July 2. The "No Pago" movement, led by Omar Vílchez, the former Sandinista mayor of Jalapa, is demanding renegotiation of local business' debts to micro-financing lenders. They are also demanding that the Supreme Court of Justice issue an order to halt the eviction of 2,500 local families whose homes have been repossessed. The government has pledged to send a negotiating team, but the protesters say they will launch new roadblocks until their demands are met. (EFE, July 3; Nuevo Diario, Managua, July 2)