Exploited Labor: News & Updates

Nolvia Alberta Obando Turcios,  a respected Christian pastor and leader of the Las Galileas Women’s Rural Movement in the La Bomba community of Jutiapa, Atlántida Department, is being falsely criminalized and persecuted through irregular judicial proceedings. 

Nolvia Obando is scheduled for trial on charges of land usurpation on August 12. She and 60 other members of the women’s farming cooperative were evicted from land disputed by a private landholder in March 2023. She spent five months in pretrial detention, released only after paying a $2,000 bail.  Both before and after her arrest, Nolvia Obando has suffered many human rights violations, including defamation and stigmatization from police authorities and news agencies who baselessly claim that Las Galileas is a criminal gang engaged in terrorist activities.

The criminalization of Noliva Obando is part of a larger attack of systemic criminalization against women’s rights workers and land defenders.  In its 2024 Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Honduras, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warned: “The use of criminal offenses such as incitement to violence, usurpation, insults and slander are the most commonly used to criminalize human rights defenders, especially those who defend the environment, land and territory. ” The judicial process has violated Nolvia Obando’s procedural rights and has done harm to her personal, emotional, and mental integrity.

Her defense attorney is concerned that the proceedings have been prejudicial against Noliva Obando. IRTF is urging that authorities investigate the possible complicity of judges, magistrates, police, and the Public Prosecutor’s office with the private landholder of the disputed territory of Las Galileas.

The farming families of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in the Urabá region of Antioquia Department have suffered many tragedies over the past 27 years: murders, sexual violence, massive displacements, destruction of homes, usurpation of land, and burning of crops.

During April and May, Germán Graciano, the legal representative of the Peace Community, received phone calls with death threats.  In mid-April, paramilitaries held a meeting with local leaders of community action boards in the township; at least one paramilitary threatened the extermination of the community.  Threats reemerged after June 10 when a federal jury in Florida found Chiquita Brands liable for the killings of eight men (banana workers) between 1997 and 2004 and ordered Chiquita to pay their families $38.3 million in damages. Chiquita Brands has a history of abuses linked to its operations in the Urabá region of Antioquia Department, where the Peace Community has been located for the past 27 years. Seventeen years ago Chiquita admitted to paying more than $1 million to the paramilitaries who killed the banana workers.

We are urging that authorities in Colombia review the various precautionary and protective measures ordered since 1997 for the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the Constitutional Court of Colombia.