From East Timor & Indonesia Action Network, June 28:

The presence in Papua of a senior Indonesian army officer indicted on crimes against humanity charges in East Timor (now Timor-Leste) endangers human rights defenders and political activists and is a sign of the Indonesian government’s lack of commitment to justice and accountability a coalition of Indonesian and international human rights organisations said today.

The Philippine military is waging a "dirty war" against leftist activists and journalists, Human Rights Watch charged in a June 28 report, "Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines." Based on more than 100 interviews, the report details the involvement of security forces in the murder or "disappearance" of members of opposition parties and NGOs, journalists, outspoken clergy and anti-mining and agrarian reform advocates. "To date there have been no successful prosecutions of any member of the armed forces implicated in recent extrajudicial killings," the report states.

Raúl Reyes, secretary of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), issued a call June 29 for the suspension of military operations in the southwest of Colombia to allow for the transfer of the bodies of 11 lawmakers who died in guerilla captivity on the 18th. The call came in an open letter to the relatives of the legislators and former cabinet minister Alvaro Leyva Durán, who led the failed peace dialogue wiith the FARC in 1998 and has since been involved in efforts to free the hostages. The letter comes a day after the FARC's Joint Western Command (Comando Conjunto de Occidente) e-mailed a communique to the Colombian media asserting the legislators had been killed in crossfire between the guerillas and an "unidentified military group." (La Jornada, Mexico, June 29)

In response to years of activist pressure, Congressional Democrats have proposed amendments to the Bush administration's annual foreign aid appropriations request for Colombia. If the Democrats have their way, overall funding will be cut by 10%, while 45% of the total package will now be devoted to economic and humanitarian assistance, the remainder to the military. Yet, the majority of aid would still be directed at Colombia's military, regularly implicated in horrendous human rights abuses. Moreover, despite the proposed cuts, Colombia is "expected to get an additional $150 million in purely military and police assistance through a separate appropriation in the defense budget bill," as the Houston Chronicle reported June 7. Nor do the Democratic proposals appear to include any new mechanisms for ensuring that remaining military aid is not used to commit human rights abuses. (Jake Hess for Upside Down World, June 27)

Thousands of Chileans clashed with police, blocked roads and set fire to buses on Monday to protest Chile's state-owned mining company Codelco. "We are going to intensify the strike," said Cristian Cuevas, a spokesman for the newly formed Confederation of Copper Workers (CTC) that comprises 30,000 subcontracted workers at Codelco. Contract workers with the state copper giant are demanding higher wages, bonuses, access to health care and education benefits. The price of copper has almost tripled in three years. "We will not end this movement until a negotiation with Codelco, with the government, is resumed," added union leader Cuevas.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have opted to abandon their heavy crude oil projects in eastern Venezuela's Orinoco Belt rather than cede majority ownership and operating control to the state-owned oil company PDVSA, Venezuelan officials announced June 26. President Hugo Chavez had set that day as the deadline for the six foreign owners of four projects in the region to agree to new terms, a part of his program to "re-nationalize" the energy sector, along with banks and telecommunications.

Eritrean state radio reports that fifty-three weyane (Ethiopian) soldiers, including officers, have defected to Eritrea over the last few months. The soldiers are said to include three lieutenants, a second lieutenant, a sergeant, four corporals and 14 lance-corporals, who all object to Ethiopia's Somalia intervention and the regime's ethnic favoritism. Eighteen of the defectors are said to be ethnic Oromo, 15 Tigrayans, 15 Amhara and the remainder from the Gurage and southern Ethiopian peoples. The Ethiopian regime is dominated by members of the Tigray ethnic group. (Voice of the Broad Masses of Eritrea, Asmara, in Tigrinya, via BBC Monitoring, June 11) Ethiopian state television, in turn, reports that a small guerilla group in the pay of sha'biyyah (Eritrea's ruling party) operating in Teru District in Ethiopia's northeastern Afar Region has surrendered peacefully to government forces. (Ethiopian TV, Addis Ababa, in Amharic, via BBC Monitoring, June 21)

The UN has now vindicated the recent findings of a British study on the roots of the Darfur conflict. From Guardian Newspapers, June 25:

LONDON — The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which threaten to trigger a succession of wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according to a U.N. report.