The Tatar people, whose homeland on the Crimean Peninsula was illegally annexed from Ukraine by Russia in 2014, are now mobilizing across their diaspora to resist the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian heartland. The World Congress of Crimean Tatars released a statement calling the Russian invasion "banditry," and calling on Tatars everywhere to "fight against this immoral attack of Russia." The statement reads: "Our Congress recognizes its humanitarian and moral obligation to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and all other heroes and civilians who are victims of attacks and war, and so help them in all ways they are capable."

As many as 17 people were killed in a massacre in Mexico's west-central state of Michoacán on Feb. 27, with video of the grisly incident going viral on social media. The victims were lined up along the outer wall of a house and shot dead execution-style after armed men forced them out of a wake they were attending in the pueblo of San José de Gracia, in Marcos Castellanos municipality. The perpetrators, who have not been identified, removed the bodies in trucks and took them to an unknown location. It appears to be the worst massacre in Mexico under the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who came to office in 2018 pledging to de-escalate violence in the country.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Feb. 7 urged Tajikistan's authorities to restore internet connectivity in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO, by its Russian acronym), and called on the national government to ensure due process for a political activist from the region whose whereabouts remain unknown weeks after he was detained.

Two media outlets have been ordered closed and two journalists arrested by the autonomous administration in Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria, according to local reports. Kurdish broadcaster and news site Rudaw—based in Erbil, Iraq—was suspended from working in the enclave, known as Rojava, by a Feb. 5 order of the Autonomous Administration of North & East Syria. In a statement on its website, Rudaw Media Network called the order "a crime against freedom of the press in Western Kurdistan." Rudaw is affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the ruling party of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government, which also operates as an internal opposition in Syria's Rojava region.

In Episode 109 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores the under-reported conflict in India's northeastern state of Nagaland, which has seen a multi-generational pro-independence insurgency. Popular protest is rising there since an army massacre of coal-miners in December. The armed conflict began in 1956, when the Naga National Council declared independence from India in the face of Delhi's intransigence on recognizing local autonomy, and adopted a constitution emphasizing village self-rule. The traditional Naga territory is divided by the border with Burma, which has complicated their self-determination struggle. With Burma now going over the edge into civil war, there are growing fears that India's conflicted Northeast could be further enflamed. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

At least 14 protesters were killed in Chad's Ouaddai province Jan. 28, climaxing several days of mounting violence and unrest. Protests broke out in provincial capital Abéché after the central government suspended the powers of Ouaddai's traditional sultan, Cherif Abdelhadi Mahdi. The appointed prefect of the province is to assume his traditional powers over the ethnic Ouaddai community. The traditional Ouaddai chieftain of the locality of Bani Halba has also had his powers dissolved by decree. The appointed replacements are apparently to be Arabs, exacerbating tensions between the Arab and ethnic Ouaddai communities. Local rights groups say some were killed by security forces in the preceding days' protests as well, and are demanding an investigation. The heretofore autonomous sultanate of Dar Ouaddai is a survival of the Wadai Empire, which ruled much of the region from the 15th century through the consolidation of French colonial rule in 1914. (TchadInfos, AlWihdaInfo, AFP)

Hundreds in India's conflicted eastern state of Nagaland began a two-day cross-country march Jan. 10 to protest the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gives the military broad power to use deadly force in areas where it is declared to be in effect. Some 200 set out from Dimapur, the state's largest city, and the march had swelled to over a thousand by the time it reached state capital Kohima, 75 kilometers away. The action was called in response to last month's massacre of 14 residents in the village of Oting, where army troops fired on what proved to be truck filled with coal-miners on their way home after work—not separatist guerillas, as had apparently been suspected. The march was organized by the Global Naga Forum and the Naga Mothers' Association, whose spokesperson Rosemary Dzüvichü accused the Indian government of viewing the Naga people as "the other." She lamented: "We still have this colonial attitude being shown to us." (Nagaland Post)

Several civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 forced to flee their homes in heavy clashes between Burma's military and resistance fighters of the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) for control of Loikaw, capital of Kayah state. "Members of humanitarian organizations for IDPs [internally displaced persons] and civil society groups are carrying out rescue operations to save the trapped civilians," said a KNDF officer. "KNDF soldiers are also helping them." Speaking of the military's new offensive to retake the city, he added: "We can see they are preparing to annihilate us in every possible way."