Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

The Guatemalan presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo has denounced a police raid on his center-left Semilla party headquarters as a “corrupt” show of “political persecution” just a month before the high-stakes runoff election. In a post on Twitter, Arévalo derided the raid as a “flagrant demonstration of the political persecution we have denounced”. The presidential hopeful has blamed the police action on a “corrupt minority” but did not go into further detail. The raid follows an investigation into alleged irregularities in the registration of more than 5,000 Semilla members, which the party has denied and which has been widely criticized by rights groups as improper interference in Central America’s biggest democracy. Arevalo is scheduled to go up against former first lady Sandra Torres on August 20. 

For decades the United States has armed and supported military and paramilitary forces around Central America in its fight to oppress challenges to global capitalism. In this glorious struggle no means and violent actions were too extreme for "the nation of freedom and liberty," no matter who the victims were. Especially under the Reagan administration, violence by US-trained and armed forces ramped up, with one of the most devastating acts being the El Mozote massacre of December 1981 when the Salvadoran Army's Atlácatl Battallion killed more than 800 civilians, including children, in the small village in northern El Salvador. 

In this period of war crimes one of Reagan's most important supporters was Elliott Abrams, who served under President Reagan in the US State Department as both Assistant Secretary of Human Rights and Assistant Secretary of Inter-American Affairs. From the beginning on Abrams' was a strong supporter of the US's insurgency policies and a strong defender of dictators like Ríos Montt in Guatemala under who's regime mass murder, rape and torture were committed against the Ixil Mayan people, events later classified as a genocide by the United Nations. When asked about the US's record on El Salvador in 1994, Elliott Abrams called it a "fabulous achievement." 

Thirty years after the end of his initial service in the State Department under Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump brought Abrams back to the forefront of international politics as the United States Special Representative for Venezuela, were he represented the US's policy of starving the nation and support of the attempted coup in Venezuela. In 2020 Abrams additionally took over as Special Representation for Iran, pushing sanctions that harmed the Iranian civilian population. 

Now the Biden Administration is sending to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee the nomination of Elliott Abrams to join the State Department Bipartisan Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. It is clear that Elliot Abrams does not belong in another US administration. Please urge all Committee members to oppose his deployment. 

You can help in our (and other human rights groups') efforts.

TAKE ACTION

1) Click here to see if your US senator is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams.

2) Send a message to your US senator even if they are not a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Tell them that if this comes up for a vote in the full US Senate, you urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams. You can find contact info for your US senators at https://www.senate.gov/

3) Send a message to your US congressperson.  Tell them that if this comes up for a vote in the full US House, you urge them to oppose the nomination of Elliott Abrams. Take action at https://afgj.salsalabs.org/oppose-elliott-abrams-nomination/index.html

Colombia is in a process of trying to become a peaceful  democratic nation. To reach this goal of a new Colombia, President Gustavo Petro has established a "Total Policy" aiming at dismantling militant, armed groups by holding peace talks. In the center of this project stands the search for a peace agreement with the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's largest active rebel group. In ongoing peace talks, the Colombian government and the ELN have agreed to a monitored ceasefire starting on August 3, potentially ending the almost 60-year long conflict.  

On July 4 the ELN took a first step to peaceful negotiations when they ordered an end to all attacks on the Colombian army and security forces, four weeks ahead of the official ceasefire in August. The bilateral cessation of attacks, agreed on in peace talks, is an effort to stop further bloodshed in the coming weeks but will not be independently monitored. 

In a statement given on July 4, ELN's 59th anniversary, its leadership repeated the group's commitment to the peace talks, stating that "we [ELN] are committed to peace talks and transformations, with the process for civic participation" and called for civilian support. According to local news reports, the ELN kept up its attacks until as long as four hours before the attack halt, assaulting security forces and reinforcing its defensive positions. 

The agreed ceasefire on August 3 and recent progress in peace efforts can be traced back to 2018 when then president Juan Manuel Santos started short lasting peace negotiations, which were stopped after only a year by the succeeding president Ivan Duque. After the election of President Gustavo Petro in 2022 and the declaration of the "Total Peace" policy, the peace negotiations were again picked up and seem to bare some fruit. Petro's policy not only includes the ELN but provides a breeding ground for civilian participation and includes talks with other militant groups. 

We are more than glad to hear about this development and are looking hopeful to a future that might bring an end to this devastating war.      

In the Cleveland immigration court in May 2023, nationals of Venezuela ranked #1 of all new deportation cases filed by the Department of Homeland Security against Latin Americans.  Since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2022, the number of Venezuelans has been right up there with Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Mexicans.  So what is driving so many Venezuelans to Ohio?

In this month’s Migrant Justice Newsletter, please read about: 1-Immigration Court in Cleveland, OH, 2-ICE Air: Update on Removal Flight Trends, 3-Cruelty at the Border Is Not Success, 4-At the Border: Recent Incidents at and around the US-Mexico Border, 5-Halfway to the US: A Report on Migration from Honduras, 6-Venezuelans: How US Sanctions Are Driving Migration North to the US, 7-Asylum in Limbo – a book review. Then see our TAKE ACTION items: A) Follow the Biden Deportations Tracker, B) Tell Senator Sherrod Brown to take his name off Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s anti-asylum bill!, C) Urge Your Congressperson to Support the American Families United Act (now called Dignity Act), and D) Restoring Asylum and Dignity for Immigrants – webinar July 12, 7-8pm EDT.

Even though Title 42 ended on May 11, removal flights to El Salvador and Honduras increased in May. And in Cleveland’s immigration court (EOIR), new deportation cases filed in May were up 1200 over the previous month, due mainly to the government filing cases against 1278 migrants from Mauritania and another 888 against migrants from Uzbekistan. The top nationalities (from Latin America/Caribbean) with new deportation proceedings filed in Cleveland in May: Venezuela (450), Mexico (278), Colombia (209), Guatemala (195), Haiti (160), Honduras (159), Peru (135), Nicaragua (77), El Salvador (47).

Read IRTF’s June 2023 Migrant Justice Newsletter at: https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog/migrant-justice-newsletter-june-2023

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in southern Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

June 28, 2023 marks 14 years since the 2009 coup in Honduras. The Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN) honors the years of resistance in Honduras to that coup and the 13 years of dictatorship it installed. We recognize that today the Honduran people continue to fight to dismantle all the structures of the post-coup dictatorship and are up against the same powerful forces they faced in 2009. These forces include the U.S. government and other governments such as Canada that supported the coup and were complicit with the narco-dictatorship. Read our statement for the anniversary here.