Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported (PDF) Jan. 30 that Syrian authorities deliberately demolished residential neighborhoods with explosives and bulldozers in Damascus and Hama over the last year. The report found that the demolitions are related to the violent conflict in Syria between the government and opposition forces. HRW officials determined the correlation between the armed conflict and the demolitions from eyewitness testimonies, statements from government officials and the military's involvement in the demolitions. HRW believes this destruction to be in violation of the Hague Regulations, which forbid the unnecessary destruction of the enemy's property, and the Geneva Conventions (PDF), which prohibits the "extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." HRW urges the Syrian government to halt wanton destruction of property and urges the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Mongolian ecology activist Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, who was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2007 for his campaign to protect water sources from mining pollution, was sentenced on Jan. 21 together with four associates to 21 years in prison each for "acts of terrorism." Munkhbayar was arrested on Sept. 16 at a protest in front of the parliament building in Ulan Bator during which a firearm was discharged. Security officials also allegedly found an explosive device in a nearby building. While stating that it does not condone violence, the Goldman Prize asserts that "it is widely understood that the shot was not fired on purpose and nobody was injured." The protest was called by Munkhbayar's "Fire Nation" movement to oppose a new government contract with French company Areva to revive uranium exploration in the Gobi Desert, which traditional heders say has led to death and deformities among livestock. Mongolia's parliament is considering a bill to loosen restrictions on a hard-won environmental law that prohibit mining in the headwaters of rivers and other sensitive areas.

A court in China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Dec. 31 handed down prison terms to six herders who protested the seizure of local grazing land by a forestry company. Four received suspended sentences and were released, while two remain behind bars because they refused to plead guilty, rights groups and relatives said. The trial took place in Ongniud (Chinese: Wengniute) banner (county), which was the scene of protests last year when traditional lands of the local at Bayannuur gachaa (village) were turned over to the state-run Shuanghe Forestry Co. The six were arrested in June on charges of "sabotaging production management"—apparently a reference to blocking company equipment. The four who were released had to pay "compensation" to the company. The remaining two, named as Tulguur and Tugusbayar, each received terms of two years. The trial was closed to the public, and their relatives were only told of the sentence several days later.  Nearly 200 herders staged protests in front of Ongniud city hall in late December as the case drew to a close. "The verdict is clearly unjust, this is a land dispute and not a criminal case," a lawyer for the defendants told Reuters by telephone, declining to be identified for fear of retribution.

Detained Uighur scholar and activist Ilham Tohti was accused by Chinese authorities of "separatism" in Jan. 25 statement, and formal charges against him are expected imminently. The Bureau of Public Security in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, said Tohti recruited followers through his website to incite ethnic hatred and spread separatist ideology. In an online statement, the bureau charged that Tohti told his students that Uigurs should use violence and oppose the government as China opposed Japanese invaders during World War II. It also claimed Tohti told his students that those who attacked Xinjiang police in previous incidents were heroes. "Ilham Tohti made use of his capacity as a teacher to recruit, lure and threaten some people to form a ring and join hands with key people from the East Turkestan Independence Movement to plan and organise people to go abroad to take part in separatist activities," according to the statement posted to the bureau's official Weibo feed.

The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court on Jan. 26 sentenced legal scholar and activist Xu Zhiyong to four years in prison on the charge of "gathering a crowd to disturb public order." Xu is the founder of the New Citizens' Movement, a grass-roots organization which seeks to draw attention to matters of public discontent, including equal access to education and disclosure of Chinese officials' personal assets to combat corruption. Xu's trial was on Jan. 22, and his closing statement to the court was interrupted after roughly 10 minutes by the judge, who said his comments were irrelevant. In his statement, Xu addresses the need to uphold constitutional rights for all citizens in China under the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. US Ambassador Gary Locke issued a statement on the day after Xu's trial, expressing concern over the recent arrests of advocates for government reform in China. Amnesty International called the four-year sentence shameful, and the Human Rights Watch called the trial a pretext for a broad crackdown on popular protests against corruption.

The Turkish armed forces on Jan. 29 attacked a convoy of al-Qaeda-linked rebel group ISIS in Syria in, destroying three vehicles, according to Turkish media reports. Turkish F-16s apparently struck the convoy "after militants opened fire on a military outpost" on the Turkey-Syria border. (Al Jazeera, Jan. 29) The skirmish comes amid reports that both ISIS and the Nusra Front, both al-Qaeda affiliates, have seized control of most of Syria's oil and gas resources, which lie in the country's north near the Turkish border, and are using the proceeds to underwrite their wars against both rival rebels and the Bashar Assad regime. While the oil and gas fields are in decline, control over them has been key to the growing power of the two groups. ISIS is even said to be selling fuel to the Assad government—lending weight to claims by opposition leaders that the regime is secretly backing the Qaedists to weaken the other rebel armies and discourage international support for their cause. (NYT, Jan. 28; The Telegraph, Jan. 20) 

The US State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch joined Jan. 28 to condemn the Cuban government's detentions of dissidents to keep them away from a Havana summit of hemispheric leaders. According to rights activists in Havana, an estimated 100 pro-democracy activists have been briefly detained or put under house arrest for the two-day summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), which ends Jan. 28. Thirty dissidents were detained when they gathered in Santiago de Cuba as Cuban ruler Raúl Castro was giving his opening address to the summit. CELAC is supposed work towards economic integration of its 33 member states. Dissidents were planning two "parallel summits" this week to discuss human rights and other issues. Argentine activist Gabriel Salvia was deported by Cuban authorities when he arrived in Havana to join the parallel summit. "It is unacceptable to not to be able to do in Cuba what can be done in any other country that belongs to CELAC," Salvia said on his Twitter page.

World War 4 Report has been keeping a dispassionate record of Barack Obama's moves in dismantling, continuing and escalating (he has done all three) the oppressive apparatus of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) established by the Bush White House. On the day of his 2014 State of the Union address, we offer the following annotated assessment of which moves over the past year have been on balance positive, neutral and negative, and arrive at an overall score: