More than 1,000 are being held in horrific conditions, facing disease, malnutrition and torture, as part of Cameroon's crackdown on Boko Haram, Amnesty International charges in a new report. Entitled "Right cause, wrong means: Human rights violated and justice denied in Cameroon's fight against Boko Haram," the report details how the military offensive has resulted in widespread rights violations against civilians in the Far North region of the country. "In seeking to protect its population from the brutality of Boko Haram, Cameroon is pursuing the right objective; but in arbitrarily arresting, torturing and subjecting people to enforced disappearances the authorities are using the wrong means," said Alioune Tine, Amnesty's West and Central Africa regional director. "With hundreds of people arrested without reasonable suspicion that they have committed any crime, and people dying on a weekly basis in its overcrowded prisons, Cameroon's government should take urgent action to keep its promise to respect human rights while fighting Boko Haram."

French President Francois Hollande announced that he will extend the state of emergency for another three months in light of the Nice attack—just hours after saying he would lift it. Both Hollande's earlier Paris announcement that he would lift the emergency provisions and the Nice attack came amid official Bastille Day celebrations. Speaking to a crowd on the Champs-Elysées, Hollande said that the state of emergency—in place since November's Paris attacks— would not extend beyond July 26: "We can't prolong the state of emergency forever. That would make no sense, it would mean that we were no longer a republic with laws which can apply in all circumstances." The state of emergency was extended three times by parliament—most recently to boost security through the Euro-2016 soccer match.

The Turkish government is blocking access for independent investigations into reports of mass abuses against civilians across southeast Turkey, Human Rights Watch said this week. The alleged abuses include unlawful killings of civilians, mass forced civilian displacement, and widespread unlawful destruction of property. Since the July 2015 breakdown of a peace process to end the decades-long conflict between the Turkish state and the armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), violence and armed clashes in the southeast region have escalated. During security operations since August, the authorities have imposed blanket, round-the-clock curfews on 22 towns and city neighborhoods, prohibiting all movement without permission. The curfews also prevent non-governmental organizations, journalists, and lawyers from scrutinizing those operations or any resulting abuses by security forces or armed groups. Authorities have blocked rights groups—including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights—from trying to document abuses even after curfews and operations ended.

Egypt's National Security Agency (NSA) is abducting, torturing and forcibly disappearing people in an effort to intimidate opponents and wipe out peaceful dissent, Amnesty International charged in a new report July 13. "Egypt: 'Officially, you do not exist': Disappeared and tortured in the name of counter-terrorism" reveals a trend which has seen hundreds of students, political activists and protesters, including children as young as 14, vanish without trace at the hands of the state. Three to four people are being seized each day—usually when heavily armed security forces led by NSA officers storm their homes. Many are held for months at a time and often kept blindfolded and handcuffed for the entire period.

The US will send an additional 560 troops to Iraq to help secure a newly retaken air-base as a staging hub for the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul from ISIS, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said during an unannounced visit to the country July 11. Most of the new troops will be devoted to the perparing the Qayara airbase, some 64 kilometers south of Mosul. They will help Iraqi forces planning the drive on Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. The increase brings the total US force in Iraq to 4,647. Unofficially, that figure is probably closer to 6,000, as troops who deploy on temporary assignments are not included in the Pentagon's official tally. Taqqadum, a base in Anbar governorate where US troops train Iraqis., served a key role in the taking of Ramadi late last year, and more recently Fallujah. (Al Jazeera, WP)

On the fifth anniversary of its independence from Khartoum, South Sudan is again descending into civil war, with last year's tentative peace deal breaking down. Fighting has escalated across the country in recent weeks, and on July 9 it reached the capital Juba, with clashes reported between the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the Government (SPLA-IG) led by President Salva Kiir and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) led by former South Sudanese vice-president Riek Macher. Some of the worst recent violence came in late June, when a force of SPLA-IG troops and irregular Dinka militia entered the northern town of Wau, reportedly attacking civilians and looting their property, causing more than 100,000 civilians to flee their homes. Those targeted were mainly from the Fertit ethnicity. The violence apparently began in a conflict over who is to control the newly created Wau state, which was carved out of the former Western Bahr el Ghazal state under last year's redrawing of administrative borders. (Radio Tamazuj, July 10; Al Jazeera, July 9; VOA, June 28; Sudan Tribune, June 24)

Another indigenous leader has been assassinated in Honduras, with local activists reporting July 6 that Lesbia Yaneth Urquía was found dead near a municipal dump with severe head trauma. Urquía, 49 and a mother of three, was a local coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) in Marcala, La Paz department, where she was slain. COPINH, which leads local efforts for land recovery and against destructive development projects, has seen a string of assassinations of its leaders this year—starting with that of co-founder Berta Cáceres in March. Said COPINH in a statement: "The death of Lesbia Yaneth is a political feminicide, and an attempt to silence the voice of those brave women who are courageously defending their rights and opposing the patriarchal, racist and capitalist system of their society."

Several hundred people marched July 6 in Asunción, the Paraguayan capital, to demand the acquittal of 11 landless peasants charged in deadly violence almost exactly four years ago in the rural community of Curuguaty. Verdicts are expected this coming week in the bloody incident, which supporters of the defendants call a "massacre." The violence erupted when police moved to evict the peasants from private lands they were occupying. Of the 17 killed, 11 were peasants. In the aftermath, Paraguay's left-populist president Fernando Lugo was removed from power in what his supporters called a "coup." Prosecutors are calling for prison terms of up to 30 years for the defendants, while their supporters say they only acted in self-defense when set upon by police.  Alicia Amarilla of the National Coordinator of Rural and Indigenous Women (CONAMURI) called the proceedings a show trial in which "not a shred of evidence" has been presented against the defendants. She said they have been accused "because of their ideology, for having fought for land." (Ultima Hora, July 9; EFE, July 6)