Daily Report
New York event to recall 10-year anniversary of Farouk Abdel-Muhti detention
A special event in New York City April 26 will commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the arrest of the late Palestinian activist and Homeland Security detainee Farouk Abdel-Muhti, in the room where his supporters regularly met to organize the fight for his freedom. The event will feature a screening of Enemy Alien, a first-person documentary on the campaign to free Abdel-Muhti, who was arrested at his home in Queens in the post-9-11 sweeps of Muslim immigrants and held for almost two years. He died of a heart attack just three months after he was finally set free in 2004. The screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Konrad Aderer, the grandson of Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Others who were involved in the case will also be on hand, including Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Shayana Kadidal, who has since served as senior managing attorney for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative; and MacDonald Scott, legal representative with No One Is Illegal Toronto.
ICC closely monitoring situation in Mali
The International Criminal Court (ICC) office of the prosecutor announced April 24 that it is monitoring the situation in Mali for potential crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction. The statement notes that Mali has ratified the Rome Statute, giving the ICC jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity that may have occurred since fighting began in January. The prosecutor's office said:
Uganda: World Bank funds land-grabbing, evictions, ecocide
Released on the eve of a World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, a new report reveals widespread rights violations and environmental destruction from a "land grab" initially funded by the World Bank in Uganda. The Friends of the Earth Uganda report provides first-hand accounts from communities forced to give up their livelihoods, food supply and access to water.
Mexico: counterinsurgency general assassinated
An unknown assailant killed retired Mexican general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro Escapite with three shots to the head on the evening of April 20 at an auto shop in the Anáhuac section of Mexico City; the general had just brought his car there for repairs. The killer and an accomplice escaped on a motorcycle. This was the second attack against the general in two years; he was shot in the abdomen in Mexico City on May 18, 2010, in a supposed robbery attempt.
Mexico: questions surround deaths in Michoacán logging dispute
Eight indigenous Purépecha were shot dead the morning of April 18 near the autonomous community of Cherán in the western Mexican state of Michoacán. Two of the victims were from Cherán, which has been engaged in a year-long struggle to protect local forests from illegal loggers; six of the people killed were from the town of Casimiro Leco, better known as El Cerecito, where many of the loggers live.
Argentina: government plans to re-nationalize oil company
Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced on April 16 that her government planned to take control of 51% of the shares in YPF SA, the country's largest oil company. The Spanish company Repsol has had majority ownership of the Argentine company, formerly known as Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, since 1999. Later in the week the government took control of YPF Gas, which is also owned mostly by Repsol. A tribunal is to determine how much Argentina will pay in compensation to the companies' private shareholders.
Honduras: thousands cccupy land in massive agrarian protest
In a dramatic show of force, more than 3,500 Honduran campesino families occupied land in estates in different parts of the country early in the morning of April 17 to demand implementation of an effective national agrarian reform policy. The mobilization, the Honduran activity for the International Day of Campesino Struggles, was organized by a coalition of 10 campesino groups, including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) and the Honduran branch of the international rural workers' movement Vía Campesina. In a statement issued on April 17, the organizers said protesters had occupied a total of 12,000 hectares in eight of the country's 18 departments: Cortés, Yoro, Santa Bárbara, Intibucá, El Paraíso, Choluteca, Comayagua, and Francisco Morazán.
International: campesinos hold worldwide day of action
Campesino groups around the world planned more than 250 activities to mark the International Day of Campesino Struggles on April 17, according to the international rural workers movement Vía Campesina. The day of action—which was announced at the International Campesino Conference held in Mali last Nov. 14-17—was intended to bring attention to the need for carrying out agrarian reform, for stopping the concentration of land in the hands of wealthy landowners, and for maintaining agricultural production based on campesino farming and the principles of food sovereignty. A special focus this year was to be opposition to monoculture for export and to the production of bio-fuel crops.

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