Despite international appeals, Arizona has executed a Honduran citizen convicted of a 1983 murder. Jose Roberto Villafuerte said he loved everyone and would be joining the Lord, just before he was given a lethal injection of drugs early today. The president of Honduras made an unsuccessful personal plea by phone to state officials last night. Honduras objected to the execution, saying it wasn’t notified when Villafuerte was first arrested, violating an international treaty. Earlier today, Missouri executed a man for killing a state trooper. And this evening, Texas is scheduled to put to death a man for killing a woman in 1977 when he was 77 years old.

The House of Representatives held hearings yesterday on the proposed IMF bailout of Indonesia. Many lawmakers are skeptical of any proposed investment in Indonesia, while the human rights-abusing dictator Suharto maintains his firm grip on power. Congressional independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont did some of the toughest questioning.

Rep. Bernie Sanders: “I think what is reported in the press is that recently, large multinational banks that have made billions of dollars investing in Asia were essentially bailed out by the middle class of this country. I think you are funding, in terms of General Suharto, a vicious dictator who jails his opponents in violation of the law.”

Indonesia’s record might appear to require the use of a law compelling the United States to vote against lending billions of dollars through the International Monetary Fund to gross violators of human rights, but the United States favors a $40 billion IMF bailout of Indonesia and even offers to throw in $3 billion of backup American financing if Indonesia needs more.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, students demanding the ouster of the dictator Suharto clashed with police near the city of Bandung, and more than 20 people were injured.

This news from Thailand: Burma’s military government has sentenced a leading figure in the country’s democracy movement to 25 years in prison after she gave an interview to a foreign radio station. Authorities confirmed the sentence given San San, a member of the National League for Democracy, but said it’s because she had broken terms of an amnesty from a previous conviction. San San is 58 years old. She’s been sentenced in December to six years in prison for violating a 1950 law that allows the jailing of persons likely to “inspire security problems or incite unrest among the people.”

This news from Kigali: Rwanda set the first executions today in its trials in the nation’s 1994 genocide, saying it will send 33 people before firing squads. The 33 defendants were convicted of involvement in the Hutu government-orchestrated slaughter of more than a half-million people, most of them minority Tutsis, between April and July 1994. The 90-day bloodbath tore apart Rwandan society and left hundreds of thousands of survivors seeking justice. The condemned are scheduled to be executed on Friday. The government denied their request for amnesty yesterday after courts turned down their appeals.

Nigerian opponents of military rule today threatened civil disobedience, strikes and rallies to remove the dictator, General Sani Abacha, and thwart his so-called transformation into a civilian president. The opposition National Democratic Coalition, which supports the claim of the detained Moshood Abiola to the presidency, yesterday told Nigerians to prepare for strikes and rallies to prevent Abacha from gaining the presidency. Another opposition group, the United Action for Democracy, has told people to boycott Saturday’s National Assembly elections, now likely to be the only elections contested for representation on a national level.

Four former French government ministers, including the former conservative Prime Minister Édouard Balladur, testified before a parliamentary hearing on France’s military role in Rwanda. In defending their actions, they said they had tried to stop the killings of more than half a million people in 1994.

Thousands of people may die of famine unless Sudan authorizes more humanitarian aid flights quickly to a southern civil war zone, this according to the U.N. World Food Programme. Aid officials say hundreds of thousands of people in southern Sudan face one of the most serious famines in the country’s history as a result of civil war and drought.

The Supreme Court ruled that white criminal defendants who are indicted by grand juries from which Black people have been excluded have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the indictment.