News agencies in the Middle East report that ISIS militants have destroyed the Armenian Genocide Memorial Church in Der Zor, the Syrian site where Turkish forces established concentration camps for deported Armenians during World War I—known as the "Auschwitz of the Armenian Genocide." The reports surfaced as Armenia was celebrating the 23rd anniversary of its independence Sept. 21. Armenia's Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian issued a statement calling the destruction of the church a "horrible barbarity." The church was built in 1990, and consecrated a year later. A memorial and  museum housing remains of the genocide victims was also built in the church compound. Thousands of Armenians from Syria and neighboring countries gathered at the memorial every year on April 24 to commemorate the genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished in Der Zor and the surrounding desert during the genocide. (Armenian Weekly, Sept. 21)

The UN refugee agency reports that up to 70,000 Syrian Kurds have crossed into Turkey over the past 24 hours to escape the ISIS advance on the town of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab). A Kurdish commander on the ground said ISIS forces had advanced to within 15 kilometers of the town. Most of the refugees are women, children and the elderly. Turkey opened a stretch of the border to allow the refugees to cross over. But Turkish security forces later fired water cannon and tear-gas at crowds that gathered in support of the refugees on the border. Authorities said they wanted to stop Kurdish PKK fighters entering Syria, while local TV said Kurds had been trying to deliver aid. (AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, BBC News)

the Kurdish town of Kobani is holding out against a dramatic ISIS advance into Syrian territory over the past 48 hours, wth the jihadists in control of nearly 60 villages to the east of the town. "Kobani is facing the fiercest and most barbaric attack in its history," said Mohammed Saleh Muslim, head of Syria's opposition Democratic Union Party (PYD), a PKK-aligned formation that has been in control of the area. "Whoever is going to do something for Kobani should do it now," Muslim said, calling on forces throughout the Kuridsh regions to come to the town's defense. Refering the northern Iraqi town that has been cleansed by ISIS, he added: "If we really don't want a second Sinjar we must defend Kobani.... Our people were slaughtered in Sinjar and our women and girls were sold. Honor is everything... We still have an opportunity to prevent a repetition in Kobani."

Supporters and opponents of Ecuador's President Rafael Correa took to the streets of Quito by the thousands Sept. 17—at one point clashing with each other, resulting in eight arrests. Authorities claimed several police officers were injured. Correa, who addressed his supporters at Plaza de la Independencia, boasted that the pro-government march was "bigger, much, much bigger." This was contested by organizers of the opposition march, who claimed to have mobilized some 5,000. The opposition rally was called by the Unitary Workers' Front (FUT), the country's principal trade union federation, in alliance with the indigenous organizations CONAIE and Ecuarunari. FUT called the march to oppose Correa's reform of the labor code, which union leaders denounced as a "neoliberal" roll-back of workers' rights. The indigenous groups joined to protest ongoing oil and mineral development.

The president of the Indigenous Organization of Chocó (OICH), Ernelio Pacheco Tunay, was assassinated Sept. 12 at the Embera Dobida indigenous pueblo of Bacal, Alto Baudó municipality, in Colombia's Pacific coastal department of Chocó. Pacheco was detained by armed men while traveling in a boat along the Río Nauca; his body was found nearby several hours later. The following day, Miguel Becheche Zarco, president of the Association of Indigenous Cabildos of Alto Baudo (ACIAB), was similarly taken by armed men while traveling along the same river; his body was found near the community of La Playita. Local indigenous leaders are pressing authorities for action, and protest that no investigators from the Fiscalía, Colombia's attorney general, have yet arrived in Alto Baudó. The municipality is the scene of ongoing conflict between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Urabeños paramilitary group. Both groups have threatened indigenous leaders for demanding their right to non-involvement in the conflict. On Sept. 16, an ELN communique said the two indigenous leaders had been detained by their fighters under "due process" (sic) and confessed under "interrogation" to being government informants, an implicit admission of responsibility in their deaths. (Radio Caracol, RCN Radio, Sept. 16; communique from indigenous organizations, online at Choco.org, Sept. 15; El Colombiano, El Espectador, Sept. 14)

It has received shamefully little international coverage—or even internal coverage within Bolivia—but has of course been jumped on by the right-wing Jewish press, e.g. Arutz Sheva, Algemeiner‎, Times of Israel. And what little coverage it has received is pretty garbled—both factually and politically. On Sept. 13, a dynamite attack damaged the main Jewish cemetery in La Paz, according to the aforementioned sources—although the Agencia Judía de Noticias places the attack in Cochabamba, probably erroneously. It does appear that Cochabamba's synagogue was attacked with stones and Molotov cocktails in April and July. The American Jewish Committee weighed in on the attacks in the usual problematic terms, emphasizing President Evo Morales' protests of the Gaza bombardment—and compouding this condescension with the insult of getting his name wrong! Wrote Dina Siegel Vann, AJC's director of Latin American affairs: "President Eva [sic!] Morales' hostility towards Israel has encouraged regular attacks against the country's Jewish population in the media and violent attacks on Jewish institutions. This is a very dangerous trend that only the government can and should vigorously turn back and end."

ISIS militants on Sept. 17 detonated explosive charges to destroy the Citadel of Tikrit, birthplace of Salahaddin Ayubi (popularly rendered Saladin), one of the most important archeological sites in Iraq. Iornically, Saladin is a revered figure in Islam, who liberated much of Palestine from the Crusaders and recaptured Jerusalem for the Muslims in 1187. But ISIS charged that the place is revered as a shrine, and the fact that Saladin was Kurdish may have added to their intolerance of the site's veneration. Since seizing northern Iraq. ISIS have bombed many cultural, archeological and holy places of all the region's religions, including the tomb of the Prophet Younis in Mosul, the tomb of Baba Yadgar in Kakayi and other holy places of the Yazidis and Christians. (BasNews, IraqiNews, DiHA, PUKMedia, Sept. 17) ISIS is so extreme in its rejection of "idolatry" that it has even announced its aim to destroy the Kaaba, Islam's most sacred site. This may backfire and eventually lead to a Sunni uprising against ISIS in their areas of control. Meanwhile, cultural treasures are being lost every day.

Egypt's rights lawyer and former presidential candidate Khaled Ali on Sept. 18 joined an ongoing hunger strike by dozens of Egyptians to demand the release of those said to be unjustly detained by authorities in an attempt to curtail political dissent. Ali, whose Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights brought a case demanding repeal of the controversial protest law under which dozens of youth activists have been detained, said he would be fasting for two days in solidarity with those being held. Over 80 detainees are on hunger strike in Egypt's prisons. The controversial statute, issued late last year, bans protest without prior police authorisation and gives security forces the right to bar any public gathering of more than 10 people. Some 200 others outside prisons, including families of the detainees, activists and journalists, have organised a hunger strike in solidarity.