Result of Service

Mapuche leaders met Saturday and discussed a set of demands for the Chilean government, mainly the demilitarization of Mapuche regions. 

A group of Mapuche leaders Saturday met in Temucuicui to decide next possible steps after the assassination of Camilo Catrillanca on Nov. 14 by Chilean Carabineros (police).

The leaders decided on four demands they will put forward to the Chilean state.

A herder in Kenya's northern Laikipia was shot dead last week when police tried to confiscate his cattle

NAIROBI - Renewed invasions of white-owned ranches by herders in Kenya's northern Laikipia region a year after similar invasions led to deadly conflicts is a sign of cracks in the country's land use system, experts said on Wednesday.

A herder was shot dead when police tried to confiscate his cattle after they invaded one of the ranches last week, police and ranchers said.

• The Yawuru people’s ancestral lands lie in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, Australia’s largest state.
• Over the Yawuru people’s strong objections, the Australian company Buru Energy has installed two shale-gas fracking wells on Yawuru land.
• Although the wells are currently inactive due to a state-wide moratorium on fracking, the moratorium could be lifted pending the results of an independent scientific inquiry due by the end of the year.

QUITO, ECUADOR — Thousands of activists and indigenous leaders have gathered in Quito after a 10-day march across Ecuador in defense of water and land rights. An estimated 2,000 people joined in towns and cities along the route, which began in Tundayme in the Amazonian province of Napo on November 4 and finished in the capital on November 14. Organized by ECUARUNARI (Confederación de la Nacionalidad Kichwa del Ecuador), the 890-kilometer march (equivalent to 553 miles) was a protest against mining and hydroelectric projects participants said are decimating Ecuador’s forests

Latest legal skirmish in a long battle between activists and the company building the pipeline, which is also behind Keystone XL

• Papua New Guinea has embarked on a surge of building projects in Port Moresby as the capital city prepares to host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
• In the buildup to the summit, thousands of people were evicted from a settlement in Paga Hill, which is next to the conference hall where the APEC Leaders’ Summit will be held.

Tribal group reignite protest on anniversary of attack that saw members killed, thousands 'evicted from ancestral lands'

Rights activists and Santals have renewed calls on the government to return large swathes of disputed land to the ethnic minority community in northern Bangladesh.

The call was made at a protest attended by hundreds of Santal people in the Govindaganj area of Gaibandha district on Nov. 6.

By most accounts, Benjamin Ramos died doing exactly what he had always done as a human rights lawyer: helping his clients free of charge.

The planned prosecution of Supreme Court judges who acquitted 11 peasant farmers jailed over the death of police officers during a violent land eviction in 2012, known as the Curuguaty Massacre”, could undermine the rule of law, a UN expert said on Monday.

“These are fundamental elements in the full enjoyment of human rights,” UN Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers, Diego García-Sayán, said in a press release.

Sri Lanka’s civil war ended nearly a decade ago, but Maithili Thamil Chilwen’s barren plot of land still resembles a battlefield.

There is only a mound of dirt where her home once stood in Keppapilavu village in the country’s northeast; the rest is just dirt, gravel, and broken shards of doors and windows from her demolished home.

As energy-hungry India seeks to fuel its continued economic growth, millions of people are being pushed out of their homes by companies, villagers say

By Megha Bahree

PIDARWAH, India - Siyaram Saket refuses to give up his one-and-a-half acres of farmland in central India - no matter how much the coal mining company offers him.

Whatever the amount, said the 55-year-old, it will not be enough to replace the value of the fertile land feeding his family of six in Pidarwah village, Singrauli district.