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Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

RRN Case Update
RRN Case Update: December 2021
December 31, 2021
December 2021 - RRN Letters Summary
Please see below a summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in 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: -protect people living under threat -demand investigations into human rights crimes -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.
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News Article
Honduras: How a bloody land feud in Honduras is stoking migrant flight to U.S.
December 23, 2021
In Aguán, groups like Juan Moncada’s, a murdered cooperative farmer, have dwindled, mostly because of migration. Once boasting 248 families, the cooperative is now half that size. Those who remain are intensifying efforts to reclaim land, occupying disputed palm plantations and stepping up campaigns to authenticate titles they say prove ownership of some plots. Moncada's murder is part of a free-for-all in northern Honduras that pits peasants, landowners, public and private security forces, criminal gangs and government officials against one another. Decades in the making, the conflict is a growing source of bloodshed and a record tide of migration by people seeking to flee land grabs, violence, poverty, and the widespread corruption and impunity that fuel them.
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News Article
Environmental Human Rights: Threat of Metal Mining Returns to El Salvador, Organizations Warn
December 21, 2021

The National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, a coalition of environmental and social movement organizations, universities, water justice activists, faith communities, human rights defenders, and others, issued a warning last week regarding the intention of the Bukele administration to permit metal mining in El Salvador, reversing the ban passed unanimously in 2017. As background, in 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a total ban on metal mining. The historic legislation was the achievement of over a decade of community organizing and education, led principally by rural women, and came at the cost of violent harassment, threats, and even the assassination of community leaders involved in the struggle. Four years later, under the Bukele administration, environmental and social movement organizations are again on alert over the possible return of metal mining in El Salvador. “We are not being alarmists," said Omar Serrano from the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA). "There are signs indicating that [the administration] is thinking of returning to mining, even if they do not say so publicly.”

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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Guatemala, 12/14/2021
December 14, 2021
We wrote to officials in the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) of Guatemala to express our disappointment that it has not resolved the 15-year controversy surrounding the El Fénix nickel mine in El Estor, Izabal Department. On December 10, the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) announced that the community consultation process on the mine was officially completed and that mining operations could resume in January 2022. This is preposterous. The consultation—a process which normally takes at least a year to complete—was conducted in just over three months, during the majority of which the community of El Estor was under a state of siege (cf our letter of November 21, 2021). The Xinka Parliament, the Q’eqchi’ Ancestral Council, the Defensoría Q’eqchi’, and the El Estor Fisherman’s Guild have all refused to recognize the rushed and inadequate consultation process. We urging that MEM suspend the mining license until there is a new consultation process that includes the legitimate ancestral authorities who have been elected by their communities and representatives of the Fishermen’s Guild.
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Content Page
WEBINAR: Crisis in Honduras: A post-election update from on-the-ground activists
December 7, 2021

WATCH RECORDING HERE

Watch this webinar to hear from Honduran activists an update on the state of affairs in the weeks after the highly contentious 2021 Presidential Elections. In particular, we learned more about the trial against the eight political prisoners of Guapinol, which started December 9, 2021. The webinar features Juana Zúniga: activist, community leader, and the spouse of one of the political prisoners of Guapinol, and analysis of the elections by Padre Ismael Moreno, of the Jesuit-sponsored media outlet Radio Progreso.
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News Article
Honduras: Juez desconoce resolución de CSJ sobre cementerio de Azacualpa, La Unión, Copán
December 7, 2021
El juez Rafael Rivera, declaró sin lugar la nulidad argumentando en su resolución que «el cementerio de Azacualpa no constituye patrimonio cultural indígena» de la población Maya Chortí, que «si fuesen los peticionantes indígenas, esto no significa que puedan decidir sobre el cementerio» y que «es de interés público las exhumaciones en el cementerio», según lo compartido por el abogado Mejía con Criterio.hn. Frente a estos argumentos del Juez Rivera de Santa Rosa de Copán, el integrante del bufete Estudios Para la Dignidad expone que el cementerio de Azacualpa fue declarado patrimonio cultural indígena en Cabildo Abierto, que está dentro del territorio Maya Chortí, y que fue la misma Corte Suprema de Justicia la que en su sentencia de amparo dispuso que en caso de existir fallas geológicas, las autoridades municipales debían hacer lo necesario para garantizar la integridad del cementerio por ser un mandato popular a través de Cabildo Abierto.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 12/2/2021
December 2, 2021
The Armed Forces and National Police have militarized the 200-year-old Azacualpa community cemetery in La Unión, Copán Department, at the behest of a US/Canadian gold mining company. Exhumations of the mostly indigenous Maya-Chortí graves have occurred off and on for several years. Despite a Supreme Court order one year ago to stop the exhumations, in October of this year another judge issued an “urgent order” to exhume, transfer and rebury the skeletal remains. The removal of the cemetery (which is why the army and police have been deployed) is to make way for expansion of the San Andrés gold mine, which is owned by US- and Canada-based Aura Minerals and operated by its Honduran subsidiary MINOSA (Minerales de Occidente SA). Those who oppose mining operations are spied on and threatened. Many opponents (at least 35) have been criminalized.
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News Article
Honduras: Trial begins under worrisome conditions for Guapinol water defenders
November 30, 2021
Communities affected by mining continue to denounce mining activities that have led to pollution, constant surveillance and a state of terror in the community for those who oppose its implementation without consultation. The trial of the Guapinol 8 is expected to be a turning point for those defending their water and land in Honduras in the face of extractive projects resoundingly rejected by the population.
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News Article
Honduras: Monthly Human Rights Report - NOV 2021
November 30, 2021
It seems there was only one topic this month, the general elections. In the weeks running up to November 28, fear grew ever stronger of a repeat of 2017. A record number of candidates and their family members had been murdered. The JOH regime started an unprecedented vote-buying campaign handing out 7000 Lempiras to over 100’000 families. Days before the election, the new ID needed to vote had still not been distributed to everyone. And it was unclear if the new electoral bodies were up to the task as the National Party tried to undermine them all along the way. On election day, reports of voting centers opening late, long lines, more vote-buying and intimidation of voters further compounded the fear of another electoral fraud. The National Party also seemed to believe in its own capacity to steal elections and announced their victory already by mid-day. But then everything changed as the first results were published. Hondurans went to the polls in higher numbers than feared (participation is estimated at around 69%) and the opposition candidate Xiomara Castro led with 53.55% over Nasry Asfura's 33.87% with 46.5% of votes counted. In the remaining days of November, her victory was recognized by all other parties and even JOH himself. While the fight about the new configuration of Congress will be fought in December, it seems not too optimistic to say: Welcome to a new month in Honduras. In solidarity, Daniel Langmeier Honduras Forum Switzerland.
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News Article
El Salvador: Water Forum Warns of Dangers in Government's Water Resources Law
November 30, 2021

On December 21, 2021, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved a Water Resources Law that had been widely criticized by environmental and popular movement organizations on the grounds that it includes various privatizing aspects and excludes community efforts to guarantee the right to water for the most vulnerable populations. The government introduced the bill on June 18, 2021, shelving the previously proposed General Water Law, which had been under discussion for three years in the Environmental Commission. and thus erasing more than a decade of debate and consensus among social and environmental organizations. After new the bill was introduced, the majority party, New Ideas, formed an ad-hoc commission ostensibly to study it; however, none of the proposals from environmental or social movement organizations were incorporated into the bill. These organizations have thus denounced the government's bill, arguing that it establishes mechanisms to monopolize water use and institutionalizes water injustice.

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