Fleeing ISIS in Syria

The Kurdish town of Kobani near the Turkish border has attracted international attention as ISIS wages a fierce battle for control. According to Syria Deeply, approximately 160,000 Syrians have fled the area, with thousands lining up on the border crossing and more still pouring into towns and refugee camps in Turkey. In this video report by the citizen journalist association ANA Press, reporter Rami Jarrah talks to Syrians who left everything behind to flee the violence.

One man comments on the difficulty of having to leave farms, businesses, and livestock. “A lot of people were unable to leave, because they’re poor and cannot afford to leave their stocks.”

Others remark on the brutality of the ISIS fighters. “ISIS do not spare Kurds nor Arabs nor Christians. They don’t spare anyone.”

At the video’s close, Jarrah stands among thousands of Syrians waiting at the Turkish border fence–a structure that recently was replaced, he says, “because the original one was brought down by frightened Syrians trying to flee the chaos.”

Mexico: Eyewitness to a Fatal Police Attack

As authorities exhume corpses from a shallow grave discovered last weekend in the state of Guerrero, the local community is waiting to see if they belong to students from a rural teachers college who disappeared the previous week. More than 40 have been missing since a police attack on a group of students on September 26 left six people dead. Exactly who was responsible for the attack, as well as and how and why students were killed, injured, and disappeared, are the questions for which family members, fellow students, and community leaders in Guerrero are demanding answers.

The video below includes testimony of a student who survived the attack by running away when police opened fire.

Another video by the same community media group, SubVersiones, shows a protest on October 2 of students in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, demanding justice for those killed.

Honduras: Displacement of a Garifuna Community

At daybreak on September 30, police and military forces entered the Honduran coastal village of Barra Vieja in what local activists described as an effort to displace residents. For several years, the government and large tourism companies have tried implementing development projects in the Tela Bay region, but residents have resisted eviction from their ancestral lands, and have taken their complaints to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The video below was taken that day and includes testimony (in Spanish) of residents, as well as footage of armed soldiers removing bedding from homes.

“This is an illegal eviction that’s taking place to benefit foreign investors, in this case the project of Indura,” says one man, referring to the Indura Beach and Golf Resort located nearby. “We have no where to go to live,” says a woman. “And we have our children.”

To stay up to date on the latest videos of human rights abuse by citizens and activists around the world, follow @ythumanrights on Twitter and subscribe to the Human Rights Channel on YouTube.

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