Three Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MPs have gone on a hunger strike to ask the Turkish government assistance to 23 people that have been trapped under a building in Cizre (North Kurdistan, Turkey) for five days, the pro-Kurdish party announced. The hunger strike coincided in time with Ankara's decision to extend a curfew in five new districts of the North Kurdhish capital city Amed (Diyarbakir). Keep reading

Some 60 Breton civil society groups sent a letter to each of Brittany's members of the French Parliament asking them to ensure the approval of a framework law for the promotion of endangered languages and cultures before the end of the current term. The move comes 10 days after a National Assembly vote, in which almost all MPs were absent, rejected increased protection for France's languages other than French. Keep reading

By John Ahni Schertow * // Good news. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a cancelled hydro dam that spares 20,000 people from the burden of displacement. Other times, it takes the shape of a simple court admission that Indigenous Peoples do actually make the best conservationists. In this day in age such stories are incredibly rare. They are even more difficult to find amidst the constant deluge of media that doesn't matter. That makes them all the more valuable. Indigenous rights victories give us all pause to celebrate, to reflect and to rejuvenate our own quests for justice. May we encounter 10,000 more victories just like these in 2016! Keep reading

The 19th edition of the Dictada Occitana ('Occitan Dictation') is starting this weekend in the Occitan towns of Nice and Pessac (Gascony), even if many of the events associated with the celebration will take place on January 30. Participants in the Dictada can show their proficiency in listening and writing Occitan. Other activities related to the Occitan language and culture are organized wherever the dictation is held. Keep reading

Spanish authorities should "consider extending the recognition" of languages that are already co-official in several territories -Catalan, Galician, Basque and Occitan- "to other Autonomous Communities provided that there is a sufficient number of users" of those languages. This is one of the recommendations that the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe issued today, aimed at ensuring greater protection for languages other than Spanish. Keep reading

By Tom Anderson and Eliza Egret * // “We have cleared 1.5 million tonnes of rubble,” Abdo Rrahman Hemo (known as Heval Dostar), head of the Kobanê Reconstruction Board, tells us humbly as we sit in his office in Kobanê city in November 2015. But as we walk through the bombed streets, with collapsed buildings all around us and dust filling our lungs, it's hard to believe that Kobanê could have been any worse. “We have estimated that 3.5 billion dollars of damage has been caused,” he continues. Keep reading