Since early 2023, IRTF has been involved in an international solidarity campaign to drop bogus criminal charges against five environmentalists in El Salvador. After 20 months of petition gathering, calls to the US State Departement and US Embassy, a sign-on letter from the US Congress and other advocacy efforts, we are happy to report that the Santa Marta 5 have been freed!
The five prominent community leaders (Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega) were all instrumental in the successful campaign to save El Salvador’s rivers from the threat of gold mining. With a unanimous vote in El Salvador’s National Assembly in March 2017, El Salvador became the first nation on earth to ban all metallic mining.
Since they were arrested in January 2023 on politically-motivated charges, IRTF has participated in an international campaign spanning 31 countries demanding that the bogus charges be dropped and denouncing the political motivations behind their detention given the lack of evidence presented by the Salvadoran Attorney General’s office.
In a letter to the government in March 2023, a group of UN special rapporteurs and the vice-president of the UN working group on arbitrary detention, said: “We fear that the case is an attempt to intimidate those who seek to defend the environment in the country, and especially those who defend human rights from the negative impacts of mining.”
Since 2017, Amnesty International and the Inter-Church Commission for Peace and Justice have documented a string of attacks and threats against Jani Silva, president of the Association for the Integral Sustainable Development of the Amazonian Pearl (ADISPA), a community organization managing the Peasant Reserve Zone of La Perla Amazónica in the municipality of Puerto Asís, Putumayo Department. State protection under the National Protection Unit (UNP) has proven insufficient to prevent at least seven different security incidents against her. Since January 2020, she has experienced persecution, illegal digital surveillance, death threats, shots fired into her home, and she uncovered a plan for her own assassination.
On September 10, Jani Silva received a phone call threatening her life, in which the caller described a truck that was provided to ADISPA by the UNP and explicitly stated plans to blow it up with her inside. Later that same day, unknown men with high-speed motorcycles were seen on two occasions prowling around Jani Silva’s house and ADISPA’s office in the town center of Puerto Asís.
Given that in 2023 more environmental defenders were killed in Colombia than in any other country in the world, we are deeply concerned for the safety of Jani Silva.
Honduras was recently ranked by Global Witness as the most dangerous place on the planet for environmental defenders, with the dubious distinction of more environmental defenders assassinated per capita than anywhere else on the planet.
In the community of Guapinol, it was clear that Juan Antonio López’s commitment to environmental stewardship was deeply rooted in his Catholic faith. He was actively involved in the church, serving as coordinator of Social Pastoral Care in the Diocese of Trujillo and co-founding the Integral Ecology Pastoral care in Honduras.
In August 2018, he and other residents of the community of El Guapinol in Tocoa, Colón Department, organized a peaceful encampment to block construction of an iron oxide mine inside the Carlos Escaleras Mejía National Park. The extraction project would threaten animal life and contaminate small rivers (water sources for 13 communities) that empty into the Río Aguán, placing 90,000 inhabitants at risk of losing their agricultural crops and homes. In late October 2018, police and 1500 heavily armed members of the Army, Cobras (militarized anti-riot police units) violently broke up the encampment with rifles, shields, clubs and tear gas bomb—beating and detaining the encampment residents. Juan López became one of 32 Guapinol residents criminalized for their protest. Eight of the defenders (the Guapinol 8) were unjustly imprisoned for 914 days.
Tragically, on September 14, 2024, Juan López (a 46-year-old husband and father) joined the list of martyrs in Guapinol who have been assassinated for their environmental defense, a list that includes: Levin Alexander Bonilla (October 27, 2018), Arnold Joaquin Morazán Erazo (Oct 13 2020), Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla (January 7, 2023), and Oquelí Domínguez (June 15, 2023).
Local bishops, the bishops conference of Latin America, and even Pope Francis have publicly decried the assassination of Juan Antonio López and called for justice.
The anti-mining activist Juan Lopez said in an interview three years ago: "If you leave home, you always have in mind that you do not know what might happen, if you are going to return." The reason for that were threats from people whose interests clashed with Juan's activism.
Human rights organisations have been warning for a long time about the dangerous situation for environmental activists in Honduras. Now Juan Lopez was killed and people in charge like President Xiomara Castro now must take a stand.
A stunning report in Axios paints a damning picture of widespread farm labor abuse in the US agricultural industry outside the protections of the Fair Food Program (FFP).
Yet while federal prosecutions of forced labor operations grow more common in agriculture, many massive food corporations like the grocery giant Kroger continue to turn a blind eye to the extreme abuses of some of the most vulnerable workers at the bottom of their opaque supply chains, according to a shocking report, months in the making, by Richard Collings of Axios. Meanwhile, according to the report, the lack of adequate resources for state and federal authorities to protect farmworkers is only making matters worse, and is likely allowing even more widespread exploitation of the agricultural workers who put food on our tables to go undetected.
Against this backdrop of pervasive abuse, Worker-driven Social Responsibility programs like the Fair Food Program and Milk with Dignity are singled out by Axios as “key to ending widespread forced labor.”
The bullet-pointed report is a must-read. We have included it here below in full to best share its urgent message: Forced labor is an appalling reality in US agriculture today, but there is a proven solution — the unique monitoring and enforcement mechanisms of the Fair Food Program, driven by workers as the frontline monitor of their own rights and backed by the purchasing power of the program’s participating buyers.
Cañaverales, a town in Colombia’s northern province of La Guajira, has become the first beneficiary of a new government program protecting campesino communities from industrial development. On July 5, 2024, Colombia's Ministry of Agriculture declared Cañaverales a Protected Area for Food Production (APPA), safeguarding 80,000 hectares from coal mining and prioritizing agriculture. This victory follows decades of activism by Afro-Colombian, campesino, and Indigenous communities fighting against environmental degradation caused by large-scale mining.
Despite this progress, the future remains uncertain as corporate power, particularly from companies like the Turkish Best Coal Company, threatens to override these protections. The community's struggle reflects the broader challenges of balancing environmental protection with economic interests under the Petro-Márquez administration, which, despite its focus on rural development and food security, continues to face opposition from business interests and the extractive industry. The people of Cañaverales remain committed to resisting mining and protecting their land, but the threat of corporate influence and legal challenges looms large.
In this monthly newsletter, please read about : 1) ICE Air: Update on Removal Flight Trends, 2) US Government Policy: Some legislators and DHS trying to do more to offer humanitarian relief to migrants, 3) Migration Impacts on Women, 4) At the Border, 5) Beyond Borders: Health and Safety in the Age of Migration in Mexico, 6) Changing Demographics: Migrants to the US Come from Different Corners of the Globe, 7) Danger in the Darién Gap: Human rights abuses and the need for human pathways to safety, 8) Texas Gets Tough on Migrants, 9) Economic Benefits of Immigration – both documented and undocumented migrants, 10) Biden Can Claim Record Numbers of Removals.
TAKE ACTION NOW
Here is what you can do to take action this week and act in solidarity with migrants and their families. (See details at the bottom of this newsletter.)
A) Join a Solidarity Delegation to Southern Mexico: November 11-16, 2024
B) Stop Criminalizing Migrants Traveling through the Darién Gap
C) Volunteer to Assistant Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland: Catholic Charities
D) Volunteer to Assistant Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland: NEO Friends of Immigrants
E) Get Paid to Assist Migrants and Refugees in Cleveland
F) Act Now for Welcoming, Dignified, and Just Immigration
Read the full IRTF Migrant Justice Newsletter each month at https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog
assassinated: young, gay defender of environmental and human rights Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez
The killing of 34-year-old Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez is a significant loss to the rural community of Los Laureles in Danlí, El Paraíso Department. It highlights the dangers faced by those who stand up for human rights in Honduras. His commitment to his community and his work as a journalism student highlight the importance of protecting those who strive for transparency and justice.
Erlin Asbiel Blandín Álvarez was home for the weekend from Tegucigalpa, where he was enrolled in his final year as a journalism student at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). Openly gay and well-respected by his neighbors, he was committed to advocating for essential community resources, including management of a water project and bringing awareness to the trafficking of migrants through El Paraíso. So deep was his commitment that he was serving as president of the community board of Los Laureles.
On Sunday morning July 14, when he went outside his home to work on a shed that he was building, assailants arrived on motorcycles and in an ATV. Neighbors and family heard the gunshots and cries for help. They arrived only to see the assassins flee at high speed in their vehicles. Erlin Asbiel Blandín Álvarez died moments later, with gunshot wounds to his chest and shoulder.
Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez, ¡presente!
