Indigenous communities in Cambodia’s northeastern Ratanakiri province are urging the government to actually return land they say was cleared by Vietnamese agribusiness Hoang Anh Gia Lai Agriculture (HAGL). The dispute dates back to 2010, when HAGL received a government concession to develop large-scale rubber plantations. Under a 2024 agreement, the company agreed to return the land to affected communities, but the transfer has yet to be completed. Cambodia’s militarized government is notorious as an enforcer of the claims of international and domestic capitalist concerns and HAGL equally notorious for land grabbing and soil degradation in neighbouring Laos
Israeli authorities are replacing historic Arab names across occupied Jerusalem in what Palestinian officials describe as an attempt to reshape the city’s identity and erase its Arab, Islamic and Christian heritage. The Jerusalem Governorate said Wednesday that Israeli authorities had removed signs bearing the historic name of Bab al-Amoud, widely known in English as Damascus Gate, and installed a sign identifying the landmark as “Old Gate.” Bab al-Amoud is one of the principal entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City and one of its most recognizable Palestinian landmarks. The governorate said the change should not be viewed as an isolated administrative decision, but as part of a broader Israeli policy targeting the historical and cultural landscape of Jerusalem.
Heavy weight international capital is pouring into Brazil attracted by rare earth mining, including from companies backed by investors in the USA, Australia and Canada. At least 25 per cent of exploration applications overlap with or are close to protected and Indigenous areas, raising concerns over pollution and deforestation. In Goiás, residents of an Afro-Brazilian community have raised concerns about Canadian backed Aclara Resources’ nearby mining claims, although the company said that it will not mine on community land.
Fights over USA President Donald Trump’s border wall are erupting once again across the Southwest. Protesters are launching tree-sits in and around Arizona-Mexico border area and the, and the Tohono O’odham Nation recently put up “no trespassing” signs to ward off the federal contractors bulldozing across the Sonoran Desert to build a secondary border wall on tribal territory and in the public parklands of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The US Administration is building a complex “border barrier system” that includes a “primary and secondary wall” with a road between them, as well as “waterborne barriers, patrol roads, and the technology required to tie it all together, such as cameras, lights, and other detection technology,” t says the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Israel now controls 42 percent of the occupied West Bank, as settlement expansion, settler attacks and military raids intensify across Palestinian communities. The number of illegal Israeli settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank has reached 592, according to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission. Some 780,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem Settlers carried out attacks across several Palestinian communities overnight, while Israeli forces launched widespread raids and arrests. The Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said that, as of the end of July, approximately 780,000 Israeli settlers were living throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem Of these, around 333,600 live in settlements in occupied Jerusalem, while approximately 446,400 live elsewhere in the West Bank. The settlers are distributed across 192 settlements and 400 settlement outposts, including 231 pastoral outposts, according to the Commission.