On June 15 the US Supreme Court declined without comment to review the case of the "Cuban Five." German author Günter Grass, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and eight other Nobel Prize winners had joined supporters filing amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2001 convictions of the five Cuban men charged with spying against the US. Eleven other groups, including legislators from the European Parliament, also filed briefs, and a panel of the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned the original trial for the men; this was the first time the panel ever condemned a US judicial proceeding. (Reuters, June 15; Miami Herald, June 9)

Youths and campesinos in a protest encampment at the edge of Los Haitises National Park in the eastern Dominican Republic reported on June 11 that they were being surrounded by military units and that they feared they might be attacked. This report followed a June 10 attack by National Police on the encampment, where dozens of protesters have been staying since May 16 in an effort to prevent the construction of a cement factory near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality, Monte Plata province. The agents removed a barricade the protesters had set up to block trucks going to the factory site. There was one unconfirmed report that the police fired shots during the June 10 incident and wounded several protesters.

On June 3 students from the State University of Haiti (UEH) began a series of militant demonstrations to protest the failure of President René Préval to promulgate a measure raising the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97)—the first increase since 2003. Although Parliament finished the process of approving the measure on May 4, it will not become law until it is approved by the president and published in the official gazette, Le Moniteur. Students from various UEH faculties have been protesting over academic issues at different times since February.

In one of the largest demonstrations in recent Puerto Rican history, tens of thousands of people marched in front of the Capitol building in San Juan on June 5 to protest plans by Gov. Luis Fortuño of the conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) to lay off about 30,000 government workers and to privatize some public services. Estimates of participation ranged from 50,000 to 100,000. Many public employees attended despite veiled threats of reprisals if they were absent from work on June 5; supervisors had been drawing up lists of people who planned to take the day off.

Dozens of Haitian activists held a sit-in in front of the Dominican embassy in Pétionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, on the morning of May 8 to protest the lynching of Haitian national Carlos Nérilus in Santo Domingo on May 2. The activists denounced both the failure of Dominican authorities to protect Haitian nationals and what they called the "laissez-faire" policy of the Haitian government; they demanded the immediate recall of Fritz Cinéas, Haiti's ambassador in Santo Domingo.

Seventeen people were arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao for involvement in a drug-trafficking ring with connections to Hezbollah, the police there said April 29. The suspects, detained the previous day, included four people from Lebanon and others from Curaçao, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, the police chief, Carlos Casseres, said. Some of the proceeds, funneled through the Middle East, went toward supporting groups linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Casseres said. The ring is also accused of forwarding requests from Lebanon for arms to be shipped from South America. (AP, April 30)

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on April 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d'eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.

Six striking doctors were lightly injured on April 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren't serious, he added, but "the consequences could have been greater." The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn't have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.