After 16 years, Peru's single-chamber Congress finally passed into law on May 19 the rights enshrined in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which commits nations to protecting indigenous and tribal peoples. In 1994 Peru ratified ILO Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which establishes in article 6 the right of native peoples to be consulted on matters affecting their territories. In the intervening years, some 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been opened to oil companies, and mining projects on indigenous lands have proliferated in the Andean sierras.

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, has accused BASF Corp., Murphy Energy Corp. and three other US companies of knowingly buying stolen natural gas condensate from Mexican bandits, according to a lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, the company's production unit, accused the companies of facilitating a black market in natural gas condensate stolen from Pemex's Burgos Field on Mexico's Gulf Coast. As much as $300 million in liquids have been smuggled across the border in hijacked tanker trucks since 2006, Pemex asserts.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, June 7:

CCR Endorses New Report Showing Evidence of Bush Administration
Human Experimentation on Men in CIA Secret Detention
Violations of Nuremburg Code and Role of Health Professionals
In Secret Torture Program Require Criminal Investigation
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to a new report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program. Download the report at http://phrtorturepapers.org.

In meetings with striking students on June 2 and June 4, officials of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) announced that the public university was $200 million in debt and that they intended to cover the debt with $200 million in tuition surcharges over the next three years—about $1,000 for each student. There will also be an "enormous reduction" in the pay to university employees, Board of Trustees president Ygrí Rivera said; this would be done through lower salaries and other cutbacks, not layoffs. Finally, UPR officials plan cuts in the budgets for books, professional services, scholarships and other aid to students, and the purchase of equipment.

Two indigenous Mexican women, Teresa González Cornelio and Alberta Alcántara Juan, were released from prison on April 28 after serving more than three and a half years of a 21-year sentence for allegedly kidnapping six agents of the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency (AFI). Their release followed a unanimous ruling by a five-member panel of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) that the two women, street vendors who belong to the Otomí indigenous group, had been falsely imprisoned. The charges against them stemmed from a March 26, 2006 incident in the market in Santiago Mexquititlán community, Amealco de Bonfil municipality in Querétaro state; the AFI agents had raided the market in an unsuccessful search for pirated DVDs, destroying the women's booth in the process.

Thousands of peasant farmers gathered in the main plaza in Hinche, a city in Haiti's Central Plateau, on June 4 to protest a donation of about 476 metric tons of hybrid seeds from the Monsanto Company, a US-based biotechnology multinational that produces genetically modified organisms (GMO). Agriculture Minister Joanas Gué admitted on May 12 that the government was accepting Monsanto's offer, supposedly intended to help the country recover from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. The seeds are not GMO, but critics say they are still a "poisoned present."

From Amnesty International, June 7:

Images of missile and cluster munitions point to US role in fatal attack in Yemen
Amnesty International has released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster munitions, apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qa'ida training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children. The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma'jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa'ida.

The Israeli Navy opened fire on an armed squad of five Palestinians wearing diving suits and supposedly on their way to attack Israeli targets, the IDF said June 7. An army source told the daily Haaretz that at about 4:30 AM, naval commandos identified and fired on a boat carrying five armed Palestinians heading north from waters off the Nuseirath refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Sources in Gaza reported that four Palestinians were killed. Hamas later confirmed the deaths and said a fifth Palestinian was missing—although conflicting reports from Gaza claimed at least two of the five-member squad survived. Other Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the militants were members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. (Haaretz, June 7)