Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

In December some of the IRTF staff traveled to El Paso, TX, to take part in “Christmas in Tornillo” at the detention camp where the US government is imprisoning upwards of 2,700 Central American teenagers in questionable conditions. Participants of the 10-day rally sang carols to the kids inside the barbed wire fence and chanted “No están solos” (“You are not alone”). The demonstrators’ nonviolent direct action culminated on New Year’s Eve when they held banners and blocked an entrance to the detention facility, also blocking the road to the US-Mexico border crossing.

US briefly shuts crossing and fires teargas to repel groups of people including children

The caravan continues on its way and already there has been a death as a result of police repression. Dennis Mejía, 26 years old, died after being hit in the skull by a rubber bullet in repression at the border at Tecún Umán, where a new wave of migrants tried to cross the Suchiate river and enter Mexico. The caravan is separated into several groups and now waits in Oaxaca, with 2500 kilometers to go to arrive at the border with the United States. Some 2,700 migrants, the majority of them women and children, entered Mexico seeking refuge in that country and several hundred more have returned to Honduras with the support of the Honduran government, the government speaks of three thousand returnees. More than six thousand continue walking and an additional 200 from El Salvador are joining.

Since the May 17-21 working visit to Nicaragua, the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) has adopted nine resolutions requesting precautionary measures to protect the lives and personal integrity of 64 people on various issues, including their families. Among the beneficiaries are student leaders, human rights defenders, journalists, relatives of victims, survivors of violence, priests, and persons who have provided assistance to injured people.