InterReligious Task Force on Central America

In a press release on the rights of transgender persons issued March 31, 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) reminded the member nations of the Organization of American States (OAS) that recognition of gender identity is essential to all civil, political and human rights. The IACHR expressed its disposition to work with member nations and civil society to promote and guarantee the human rights of persons who are trans, non-binary, or otherwise of the sexual diversity community.

In Colombia, trans people were given the right to change their gender on all identification documents starting in 2015. In October 2019, Bogotá elected their first woman and lesbian mayor. Various elected representatives across national, departmental, and local levels now come from the LGBTI+ community. Increased visibility in TV shows and media coverage has grown more consistent.

Despite the advances, hatred and violence against LGBTI+ persons (especially transgender persons) persists. In 2024, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman reported a 30% increase (compared to the previous year) in cases of bias-based violence against transgender women, transgender men, and non-binary people.   And so far this year, at least 24 LGBTI+ have been killed.

Three of those hate killings have happened in just one town, Bello, a suburb of Medellin. In a horrific act of violence on April 4, assailants abducted Sara Millerey González, a 32-year-old trans activist, beat her, broke her arms and legs and threw her into the Playa Rica River and left her to die. The incident gained national attention because onlookers recorded her screaming from the water and posted videos on social media. When rescuers finally retrieved her and took her to an emergency clinic, she was suffering from a punctured lung and hypothermia. She died from a heart attack the following day, with her mother at her bedside. “I knelt down and hugged her and told her that I loved her very much. I told her she was going to be with God, because no one in heaven was going to humiliate or discriminate against her for being her.”

The National Commission of Human Rights in Honduras recently reported that more than 60 human rights defenders, including environmental defenders, were killed under violent circumstances during 2020-2025. The majority of those crimes remain in impunity.

We wrote to the National Commissioner to express our dismay over the lack of justice in the case of environmental defender Juan Antonio López, who was assassinated while walking home from church on September 14, 2024 (cf our letter of 21 SEP 2024). Local bishops, the bishops conference of Latin America, and even the late Pope Francis publicly decried his assassination and called for justice.

As a leading member of the Guapinol Environmental Defense Committee (in Tocoa, Colón Department), Juan López worked tirelessly to protect the Guapinol and San Pedro Rivers from the destructive impacts of the Los Pinares/Ecotek mining project in the Montaña de Botaderos “Carlos Escaleras” National Park. Despite a 2024 presidential decree (Decree 18/2024) designating the park as a protected zone, reports persist that the mining company continues to operate illegally in restricted areas, protected by armed groups and with impunity.

Since 2012, Honduras has recorded at least 149 murders of environmental activists, with one of the highest per capita rates in the world. The similarities between the López case and that of murdered Indigenous Lenca environmental defender Berta Cáceres (March 2, 2016) are striking and deeply troubling: obstruction of justice, denial of state responsibility, and failure to dismantle the networks of corruption and violence that enable these crimes.

During the fall of 2023, civil society groups across Guatemala held mobilizations to ensure the peaceful transition to power of then President-elect Bernardo Arévalo while also demanding the resignation of Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, who sought to block his inauguration. In Totonicapán Department, an association of 48 Indigenous K'iche' communities led peaceful protests that shut down highways across Guatemala for three weeks.

On April 23 of this year, police arrested two of the former leaders of 48 Cantones of Totonicapán. Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán have been remanded to pretrial detention in the military prison Mariscal Zavala on allegations of terrorism because of the protests.

The arrests of Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán have prompted widespread condemnation. President Arévalo stated that the arrests were unfounded and “criminalized principles and rights that are guaranteed.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights referred to the arrests as “a continued spurious instrumentalization of the constitutional function of investigating crimes.” To show their solidarity with Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán, the Committee for Campesino Development (CODECA) blockaded 18 simultaneous locations on April 28. On May 2, members of 48 Cantones de Totonicapán held a press conference at the Plaza of the Constitution in the nation’s capital demanding their release.

Attorney General María Consuelo Porras has been accused of criminalizing the constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly. She has been sanctioned for corruption by the US and over 40 other countries, all while using her position to persecute those who have fought against corruption.

We are urging that authorities in Guatemala 1) drop all charges against Luis Pacheco and Héctor Chaclán and release them to their families; 2) investigate Attorney General María Consuelo Porras for violating the rights of Indigenous peoples and impeding corruption investigations; and 3) end the misuse of the judicial process against human rights defenders, Indigenous leaders, and others who have fought against corruption.

For two decades, the 68-yar-old award-winning anti-corruption journalist José Rubén Zamora has been subjected to threats, physical violence, and now false criminalization and detention.

In June 2003, Zamora and his family were held hostage in their home in Guatemala City for hours by a group of assailants who beat Zamora's children and forced him to strip and kneel at gunpoint.  In August 2008, Zamora was kidnapped and beaten after a dinner with friends and was left unconscious and nearly naked in Chimaltenango, about 16 miles away. Due to the threats he faced as a journalist, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) ordered precautionary (protective) measures for him twenty years ago.

In July 2022—five days after local media outlets published strong criticism of various officials of President Giammattei’s administration involved in corruption—Zamora was detained after an arrest on questionable charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling. Following reports of torture and solitary confinement and an international campaign calling for his release, a judge finally ordered him to house arrest in May 2024. But prosecutors persisted, and because of subsequent appeals court proceedings, he remained in pretrial detention until October 2024, having been detained for more than 800 days.  Then after only four months of house arrest, an appeals court sent Jose Rubén Zamora to Mariscal Zavala prison on March 10, 2025.

The renewed detention of Jose Rubén Zamora is clearly an attack on the freedom and integrity of the press. His persecution and arbitrary detention are deeply distressing and, sadly, exemplifies the criminalization of journalists, environmental defenders and other social leaders who are working for justice in Guatemala.

In the highlands of Izabal Department, the courts are siding with influential landowners who are contesting  ancestral claims of Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities. (It is also worth noting, as we did in our letter to authorities on April 14, 2025, that many of these same communities that are involved in land disputes are also resisting the expansion of large-scale metallic mining.)

For three days in a row (March 5-7), the National Civilian Police (PNC) fired gunshots in the Maya Q'eqchi' community of Río Tebernal, Livingston municipality. They forcibly removed a few dozen families from their homes.  The living conditions of the families post-eviction are dire. Between March 18 and April 7, observers from a Costa Rican human rights commission documented lack of food, drinking water, electricity, healthcare, and children’s education.

Authorities are also criminalizing land defenders. On March 15, Luis Xol Caal, a leader from the Q’eqchi’ community of Chaab’il Ch’och’ (also in Livingston municipality), was arrested by the National Civil Police (PNC) on false charges of aggravated usurpation, threats, and illegal detention. Luis Xol Caal, a member of the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA), was detained despite the fact that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) had previously granted precautionary measures to his community, which is situated near the Chocón Machacas nature reserve and with access to the Caribbean Sea. In 2018, community residents testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that the private individuals who are claiming land ownership had been using their land for drug trafficking.

We are urging that authorities end the practice of enforced eviction while land rights are still being disputed in the court system. We also urge that they end the criminalization of land defenders.

The government is falsely criminalizing those whose work is to expose and challenge abuses by the state. It’s a blatant attempt to silence them.

The Courts Against Organized Crime are, according to the government, reserved for gang members. Yet the charges of agrupaciones ilícitas  (illicit groupings) brought forth against human rights attorneys Ivania Cruz and Rudy Joya by the Attorney General's Office (FGR) and the National Civilian Police (PNC) place them in this court, where they are scheduled to appear on May 5. Their criminal proceedings jeopardize the right to legal defense of the inhabitants of La Floresta. As we wrote in our RRN letter of 13 APR 2025, 24 community leaders from La Floresta have been falsely charged them with usurpation of property, irregular marketing of subdivision parcels, illegal restriction of movement, and aggravated threats connected with illegal criminal groups (i.e., gangs). Also arrested and imprisoned is Fidel Zavala, spokesperson for UNIDEHC (Human and Community Rights Defense Unit of El Salvador), which is supporting La Floresta.

We are urging that the government: 1) release Fidel Zavala from detention and drop all spurious charges against the residents of La Floresta and members of UNHIDEC, including attorneys Ivania Cruz and Rudy Joya; 2) uphold the right to due process and defense for all of those being criminally charged; 3) respect the right to free association as stated in Article 7 of the Salvadoran constitution; 4) stop the misuse of criminal law to persecute political, social and community leaders who engage in the legitimate defense of human rights

On the same day of the forced disappearance of Max Castillo (cf our letter 15 APR 2025), the brother of the community council president of Punta Piedra (a Garífuna community along the Atlantic coast in Colón Department), another Garífuna community, El Triunfo de la Cruz (Atlántida Department) faced an incursion. On April 12, two buses carrying armed individuals—allegedly hired to “clear” land—arrived in the community. Fortunately, residents were successful in their resistance and turned them away. But then on April 14, community leaders of El Triunfo de la Cruz received voice messages containing direct threats—as did prominent Garífuna leader Miriam Miranda. The threats came from an individual claiming to be a bodyguard for an investor tied to a tourism complex illegally situated within Garífuna territory—land that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled must be restored to the community.  

These attacks follow a well-documented pattern of repression that strategically coincides with Garífuna mobilizations and symbolic actions—such as the recent symbolic funeral for the CIANCSI (Intersectoral Commission for the Compliance with International Sentences), held to protest the State's failure to implement international rulings in their favor. The Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) has rightfully described this as a synchronized cycle of terror aimed at silencing community demands and halting the recovery of ancestral lands. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has already warned that this violence will persist as long as the Honduran State refuses to uphold international legal mandates.

The Garífuna, an Afro-Indigenous people with a profound historical and cultural presence in Honduras, continue to be targeted for defending their rights to territory, culture, and life. Despite legal victories, the Honduran government has failed to implement structural reforms or offer protection for these communities.

On April 10, the Garífuna community, which lives primarily along the Atlantic coast, led mobilization in the nation’s capial,  Tegucigalpa. They demanded that the Honduran government comply with binding rulings issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2015, 2023)  in favor of three Garífuna communities in Colón (Punta Piedra) and Atlántida (Triunfo de la Cruz, San Juan). 

Barely two days later, in the early morning hours of April 12, Max Gil Castillo Mejía, brother of the president of the community council of Punta Piedra was kidnapped from his home in San Pedro Sula (Cortés Department) by armed individuals who identified themselves as police officers. Just two days later, prominent Garífuna leader Miriam Miranda and other members of the Garífuna community of El Triunfo de la Cruz received threats.

Silencing Indigenous and Afro-descendant voices through fear and violence is a violation not only of human dignity but of binding international commitments.  The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has already warned that this violence will persist as long as the Honduran State refuses to uphold international legal mandates. IRTF calls on the government of Honduras to implement the rulings of the Inter-American Court to ensure that justice, reparations, and peace are no longer deferred for the Garífuna people.