This past weekend was one of the most violent in El Salvador. At least 80 people were killed in different parts of the country, allegedly by gang members. We at WOLA condemn this situation, and stand in solidarity with the families of victims, local communities, and with the entire population that suffers because of these crimes. We reaffirm their right to live in peace and without violence.
In 2019, Francia Marquez survived an assassination attempt by men wielding firearms and grenades – an attack that came on the heels of a string of death threats against the award-winning Colombian environmentalist. Now, three years later, she could become the first Afro-Colombian vice president – a historic development in a country where politics has traditionally been the domain of wealthy white men. She was tapped for the position by leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro, widely viewed as the frontrunner in the upcoming May election. Marquez has focused her campaign on the need for economic investment in conflict zones, environmentalism, and ensuring implementation of Colombia’s 2016 peace accord. She has vocally opposed the drug wars in Colombia, known as the world’s most dangerous country for environmental defenders.
In a historic advance, the Inter-American Development Bank has designed a responsible exit plan to accompany their divestment from two controversial large dams in the Yichk'isis micro-region of Guatemala. The Bank’s decision stems from a complaint affected Mayan communities filed in 2018 before the IDB Group's Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism. In resolving the complaint, the accountability office concluded that IDB Invest failed to comply with the bank’s operational policies and safeguards in the framework of project financing, and opened the possibility of a withdrawal of investment. Affected Mayan communities celebrate the decision, while acknowledging that the Bank has several challenges left to confront.
Social movement leaders Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón were outspoken against threats to land rights of campesinos and artisanal (traditional) miners in the Magdalena Medio region. The expansion of fossil fuel drilling (fracking) and palm tree plantations (for palm oil) pose threats not only to land rights but to the environment. In February they were staying in a rural area of San Martín, Cesar Department, denouncing that the police and the mayor of San Martín were colluding with a local landowner in making threats and harassing campesino victims of violence. On February 22, armed men dressed in military gear arrived at the house where they were staying, camouflaged by the darkness of the night, and shot them dead. Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón were active in several social movement organizations that are accompanied by IRTF’s partner organization Community Peacemaker Teams-Colombia (CPT), including the Agro-mining Federation of the South of Bolívar (FEDEAGROMISBOL), the Inter-dialogue Commission of the South of Bolívar, Center and the South of Cesar (CISBCSC), the People’s Congress, the National Agrarian Coordinator (CNA), the Agrarian, Peasant, Ethnic and Popular Summit (CACEP), and others. We join with organizations across Colombia to express our sadness and outrage at the assassinations of Jorge Tafur and Teofilo Acuña Ribón.
Francisco Ruiz was a local campesino leader of the Coordinating Body of Popular Organizations of the Aguán (Coordinadora de Organizaciones Populares del Aguán, COPA). He was recognized by COPA and by the Regional Agrarian Platform of the Aguán Valley as a human rights defender supporting subsistence economic activities of the El Remolino cooperative. Ruiz had received threats a few days before a gun attack on on March 8 in the village of La Brea, in the municipality of Trujillo, Colón Department. It appears he was killed by employees of a security company because of his work in defending human rights and the lands of his community. There have been several previous attacks on members of the El Remolino cooperative and members of COPA, including forced evictions, unjust criminalization, and assassinations. Francisco Ruiz, ¡presente!
Linda Oneida Suárez Sánchez is a teacher and environmental defender and founder of the departmental chapter of Resistance to Mining and Extractivism in Santander Department. Connected to the national coordination of the Colombia Free of Fracking Alliance, she accompanies communities in opposition to fracking projects in the Magdalena Medio region. Linda was recently warned to remain silent or face death. Contentious at this moment is a proposed fossil fuel extraction project of the Ecopetrol company in the Magdalena Medio region. Environmental defenders attended a licensing hearing in February to register their opposition to the project. Retaliation against outspoken movement leaders is common. Ecopetrol has been making statements that stigmatize movement leaders with false accusations. Heightening the danger is the significant presence of illegal armed groups in the Magdalena Medio region.
This year’s “Water & War” festival from March 15-22, 2022 explores the intersection of militarism & water, survival & resistance, in the lead-up to World Water Day on March 22. A unique mix of films explores this theme, from PFAS pollution on a military base in Michigan and the infamous Red Hill fuel leak in Hawai’i poisoning groundwater, to Syrian war refugees fleeing violent conflict by boat to Europe and the story of the assassination of Honduran Indigenous water activist Berta Cáceres.
The Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz in the municipality of Tela, Atlántida Department, suffered an incursion by an armed group in search of Garífuna leaders. One hour after denouncing the incursion and intimidation on social media, Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), received threats to her life and her family’s life via text to her personal phone from an unknown number. For several years, Miriam Miranda has been threatened, harassed, and illegally jailed for her human rights defense work on behalf of Garífuna communities, whose members and leaders have been persecuted even more with criminalization and assassinations. In repeated rulings, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has criticized the government of Honduras for not adhering to its mandates to protect Garífuna ancestral lands from outside land invaders and adequately investigate the murders of Garífuna community leaders.
Although the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the trial against the Guapinol defenders, the Trujillo Court denied the definitive dismissal of the eight environmentalists who were illegally imprisoned for 914 days, now saying that the release was only provisionally granted. This decision by the Tocoa Court has provoked widespread concern that there is an attempt to reopen or manipulate the case. "We already know that they have been manipulating the process, that our comrades have spent 914 days deprived of liberty and that the company wants to continue to screw them," said Juana Zúniga, a partner of one of the eight defenders.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Pablo Isabel Hernández and Thalía Rodríguez lived far apart from each other in Honduras, and seemingly with nothing in common, yet one aspect of their lives linked them: both were defending human rights in their community. And both were killed in January of this year, along with Melvin Geovany Mejía, an indigenous rights defender who died on his way to the hospital after being shot. Isabel Albaladejo, representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Honduras, believes that three killings in less than a month shows how it has become an increasingly hostile environment for human rights defenders in the country. Honduras is considered one of the most dangerous countries for human rights defenders in Latin America. Yet, activists have some hope that the arrival of a new government, led by the first female president Xiomara Castro, may bring much needed change in Honduras.
