Farmers in central Iran have over the past weeks been turning to protests to push authorities to find a solution to the severe drought that is plaguing the county and causing once-fertile fields to turn to dust. Every day, farmers in Varzaneh, Isfahan province, have been holding a protest vigil at the town entrance, parking their long-idle tractors next to the now-dry canal that once irrigated their fields. Earlier this month, protests in the town of Abadan, Khuzestan province, were violently put down by security forces, who used tear-gas and bullets, leaving 11 demonstrators dead. The drought currently affects over 95% of Iran, and is the worst in decades. But protesters charge the problems have been exacerbated by long mismanagement and corruption. Many people have become sick due to lack of clean drinking water and it is feared that if the crisis is not resolved, many will die.

The day after thousands of Peruvians filled the streets of downtown Lima in a March Against Corruption, Duberli Rodriguez stepped down from his posts as head of the country's justice department, Poder Judicial, and president of the Supreme Court. Orlando Velasquez, president of the National Council of the Magistrature, also resigned. The justice minister, Salvador Heresi, had already been sacked by President Martín Vizcarra days earlier, amid a widening scandal concerning the perverting of the court system. The outrage was sparked when national media outlets, following leaks to investigative website IDL Reporters, aired a series of telephone recordings involving an extensive network of judges, businessmen and local authorities describing illegal deals. Heresi himself was in one of the recordings, in which he arranged a meeting with a Supreme Court judge, Cesar Hinostroza Pariachi, seemingly to sell favors., In another recording, Hinostroza is heard talking with an unidentified man about the suspect in the rape of an 11-year-old girl, openly offering to reduce the sentence or drop the charge entirely. Walter Ríos, former top judge for the city of Callao, has already been placed under "preventative detention." The Executive Council of Poder Judicial has declared a 90-day internal "state of emergency" in the department while the corruption is under investigation. Rodriguez said he was resigning "due to the institutional crisis." (France24, BBC News, Peru21, TeleSur, Peru Reports, La República, La República, Correo)

Social leader Milton Sánchez Cubas in Peru's northern Cajamarca region was acquitted July 16 of all criminal charges brought by the local subsidiary of US-based Newmont Mining. Prosecutors accused Sánchez of being "author" of the crime of "disturbance" in a protest concerning a land conflict between the company and a campesino family at the community of Tragadero Grande. Sánchez was represented by EarthRights International, which said in a statement, "[T]his case shows how the government uses legal tools to penalize freedom of expression, the right to information, freedom of assembly, and the right to protest." (ERI, July 16) Campesina Maxima Acuña de Chaupe, whose family lands were at issue in the dispute,  was cleared of "land usurpation" by Peru's Supreme Court last May. (La República)

In a joint anti-drug operation code-named "Armagedon," Peruvian military and National Police troops carried out a series of raids in the remote Putumayo river valley along the Colombian border this week, arresting some 40, destroying four cocaine laboratories, and seizing large quantities of cocaine sulfate and harvested cannabis. The raids took place in the locality of Güeppí, near Laguna Pacora, Putumayo province, Loreto region. The majority of those detained were Colombian nationals, and authorities said they suspect the presence of "dissident" FARC units, who are trying to establish the zone as a staging ground to keep alive their insurgency. More than 350 troops have been deployed in the operation, with five helicopters and three planes as well as boats. The operation is being coordinated with Colombian security forces, who are carrying out similar missions on their side of the Río Putumayo. (BBC News, July 18; El Comercio, July 16)

A leading LGBT rights group projected messages for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in giant letters on the wall of the Presidential Palace in Helsinki hours before the summit between the two leaders was set to open. "Trump and Putin: Stop the Crimes Against Humanity in Chechnya," read one message displayed by the Human Rights Campaign. Other projections read: "The whole world is watching" and "Silence is deadly." The group said in a tweet ahead of the action: "Last year, reports surfaced of Chechen authorities rounding up and detaining more than 100 men who were suspected of being gay or bisexual and 20 have been murdered. Today HRC confronted Trump and Putin in Helsinki over these crimes against humanity." The statement continued: "For more than 15 months, @realDonaldTrump has refused to publicly condemn the systematic torture, abuse and murder of LGBTQ people occurring in Chechnya as Vladimir Putin has licensed the violence to continue." (Mediaite)

Protests against high unemployment, poor government services and corruption that began in Iraq's southern oil hub of Basra have spread to several other cities, including Najaf, Amara, Nasiriya and even Baghdad. At least three have been killed since the protests erupted a week ago. Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi arrived in Barsa to try to calm the situation July 13, flying straight into the city from the NATO summit in Brussels. But the next day he convened a meeting of Iraq's National Security Council, where the decision was taken to cut Internet access in Basra and mobilize army troops to the city. After the meeting he issued a statement accusing "infiltrators" of exploiting "peaceful protests to attack public and private property." He warned: "Our forces will take all the necessary measures to counter those people." Units from the elite Counter-Terrorism Service and the Army’s Ninth Division have arrived in Basra.

Chinese police used tear-gas and baton charges to disperse Tibetan villagers protesting a mine project in Qinghai's Yulshul Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture on July 7, following two months of demonstrations at the site. Rsidents said the project at a site called Upper Dechung was undertaken without informing the local inhabitants. Several were hospitalized following the police assault, including a 70-year-old man. There are also concerns for the whereabouts of a delegation of some 50 villagers who went to complain to provincial authorities about the mine, and have not been heard from since. The mine was seemingly initiated by private interests with little or no government oversight. "Local people suspect corruption is involved in connection with this joint venture," a source told Radio Free Asia.

A year after a network of secret prisons was first exposed in southern Yemen, Amnesty International has issued a new report documenting continued rights violations in these facilities, including systemic forced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment that may amount to "war crimes." The report, God only knows if he's alive, details how scores of men have been arbitrarily arrested and detained by United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemeni forces operating outside the command of their own government. Many have been tortured, with some feared to have died in custody. Since joining the conflict in March 2015, the UAE has created, trained, equipped and financed various local security forces known as the Security Belt and Elite Forces, bypassing their leadership in the Yemeni government.