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.

Peru's Yanacocha mining company is implicated in another forced eviction of a campesino family in the northern Cajamarca region. Campesino Segundo Lindorfo Bolaños Atalaya said that on Jan. 19, a mixed force of National Police and Yanacocha security personnel ejected him from his plot within a predio (collective land holding) at Tragadero Grande, Sorochuco district, Celendín province. Bolaños insisted that, contrary to company claims, his plot of six hectares had never been sold to Yanacocha. The plot lies near Laguna Azul, which Yanacocha hopes to convert into a waste pit for the pending Conga project, a new expansion of its massive gold operations in the area. Bolaños charged that Yanacocha's exploration activities on the Conga site had contaminated his plot, which he has long worked with his family. (Celendín Libre, Jan. 23) 

On Jan. 10 the World Bank's Office of the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) released a report criticizing the process through which the bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) granted a $30 million loan in 2009 to the Honduran-based food-product company Corporación Dinant. An audit that the CAO started in April 2012 found that the IFC failed to apply its own ethical standards in issuing the loan, which is to be used in part for growing African oil palms in the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras. The Aguán's largest landowner is Dinant’s founder, the politically well-connected cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum. Producing palm oil has become highly profitable, since the oil can be used both for food and as biofuel.

Four people were killed when Cambodian military police opened fire on garment factory workers marching to demand higher pay in a Phnom Penh  industrial zone Jan. 3. Hours later, police dispersed a protest camp that supporters of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) had maintained since mid-December in the city's Freedom Park. The move came as the government announced emergence measures barring public protests by the CNRP, which accuses the Hun Sen government of rigging elections held in July. The ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) accused the CNRP of using the deadly street clash as a "pretext" to suspend talks over the impasse. The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Huamn Rights LICADHO decired the police violence as "horrific." (AFP, AP, Jan. 4; Reuters, Xinhua, Jan. 3)

Colombia's ambassador in Washington has resigned after being implicated in an alleged case of land theft, President Juan Manuel Santos said July 23. The ambassador, Carlos Urrutia, was involved in an ongoing scandal in which he repeatedly faced questions regarding his involvement in the appropriation of some 100,000 acres of land throughout central Colombia. In his resignation letter, Urrutia defended the legality of his actions: "I trust the legality of the legal argument that support the acquisitions. Unfortunately the political discussion has focused more on the background and there is resistance to hearing legal reasons that conclude the acquisitions were executed under the rule of law." Prior to his role as ambassador Urrutia was a major shareholder of the law firm Brigard & Urrutia, which is accused of facilitating the illegal lands transfers.

Authorities in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region earlier this month blocked an attempted cross-country march by traditional Mongol herders, with police assaulting hundreds in two incidents. In the first incident, herders from Inner Mongolia’s Durbed (Chinese: Siziwang) banner (county) gathered at Hohhot train station on March 1, intending to march nearly 500 kilometers to Beijing. But police quickly arrived and broke up the gathering, according to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC). The following day, troops in a dozen police vehicles descended on Halgait village in Zaruud (Zhalute) banner, breaking up another group that intended to march on Beijing. The herders hoped to arrive in Beijing for the meeting of the National People's Congress where Xi Jinping was installed as president, to protest confiscation of grazing lands.

Hundreds of campesino, indigenous and African-descended Hondurans demonstrated in Tegucigalpa on March 6 after marching 200 kilometers from the northern town of La Barca to protest new laws on mining and the Special Development Regimes (RED), better known as "model cities." Entitled "For Dignity and Sovereignty, Step by Step," and sponsored by 47 organizations—including the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), a group that fights against corruption and for the defense of natural resources—the march started on Feb. 25, with more people joining as it passed through their communities. Protesters said they would remain in the capital in front of the National Congress until March 8.

A contingent of some 30 soldiers and police agents arrested Juan Ramón Chinchilla, president of the largest campesino organization in northern Honduras' Lower Aguán Valley, the evening of Feb. 8 in the central park in Tocoa, Colón department. Police then drove Chinchilla, who heads the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), 60 kilometers to a court in the city of Trujillo, where he was charged with "usurpation of land." After a two-hour hearing, the judges released Chinchilla conditionally at about 2 am; he is required to stay in the country and to report to the court every Monday.