The Mexican authorities are failing in their duty to protect human rights activists from killings and life-threatening harassment and attacks, Amnesty International warned on Thursday in a new report. The report Standing up for justice and dignity: Human Rights defenders in Mexico describes more than 15 cases of defenders who have suffered killings, attacks, harassment, threats and imprisonment on fabricated charges between 2007 and 2009 to prevent them from doing their work. ...

Washington, DC - The Cuban government should immediately cease its harassment of the blind human rights defender Juan Carlos González Leiva, a leader of the Council of Human Rights Rapporteurs, and his family, Human Rights Watch said today. In recent weeks, Cuban authorities have repeatedly threatened to force González Leiva and his wife and fellow rights defender Tania Maceda Guerra to leave Havana and move elsewhere on the island. The authorities have pressed for the move...

A Venezuelan military helicopter has violated Colombian airspace and spied on military facilities in the northwest of the country, the Colombian Foreign Ministry said. "The incident took place early on Wednesday. A Venezuelan Bell helicopter flew near an army base hosting a [Colombian] infantry brigade in the outskirts of the town of Arauca," the ministry said in statement. "These actions are unacceptable," the ministry said, adding that an official letter of complaint...

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged the new Honduran President to order a full investigation into abuses committed by the security forces following June's coup d'état, bring those responsible to justice and provide reparations to the victims. Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, who is set to take office on Wednesday, was elected in November last year amidst a political crisis that saw President Manuel Zelaya ousted by military-backed right wing politicians in June. Hundreds of...

A spokesperson for the protesters said that “for the first time in more than a year,” VTV was paying attention to the opposition students’ movement, even if only because 1,000 students marched to the network’s studios in Caracas. The march to VTV came amid competing street demonstrations by opponents and supporters of President Hugo Chavez over his government’s decision to temporarily suspend Radio Caracas Television Internacional from the country’s cable...

The Labor Inspectorates in the Venezuelan cities of Cagua, state of Aragua, and Puerto Cabello, state of Carabobo, have conditioned the approval of the new collective bargaining agreements to the establishment of labor patrols and workers' militias. However, Maryolga Girán - the labor adviser of the Venezuelan Confederation of Industries (Conindustria) - reported in both bodies, which form part of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, there is an additional delay in the salary...

A cable-television channel critical of President Hugo Chavez was removed from the air on Sunday for defying new government regulations requiring it to televise some of the socialist leader’s speeches. Venezuelan cable and satellite TV providers stopped transmitting Radio Caracas Television, an anti-Chavez channel known as RCTV, after it did not broadcast Mr Chavez’s speech on Saturday to a rally of political supporters. “They must comply with the law, and they cannot have...

Amnesty International has welcomed the release of a Mexican Indigenous man detained for almost 10 years following an unfair trial for murder. Ricardo Ucán Ceca, from Yucatán, was released on 31 December. He had been imprisoned since June 2000. He understood and spoke little Spanish and could not read or write. During his trial, he was not given an interpreter and his state appointed lawyer did not provide him with adequate defence. Ricardo Ucán claimed he shot...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused the United States of causing the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which has killed possibly 200,000 people. Chavez believes the US was testing a tectonic weapon to produce eco-type devastations. Last week, reported that the Venezuelan President accused the United States of using Haiti’s earthquake as a pretext to occupy the Caribbean country and since then the US has deployed thousands of troops to the region to bring law and...

It was a relief to get the news today of the unsuccessful appeal by Peru’s ex-president Alberto Fujimori to challenge the guilty verdict and 25-year sentence he received last April. This reaffirms the Fujimori trial as a landmark positive event for the global human rights movement, and a definite blow to Fujimori supporters and their aspirations to put Fujimori in power again (the 5 judges of the appeals court handed down a unanimous decision). The trial, as so often happens in cases...