Afro-Descendant & Indigenous: News & Updates

armed men threatened Aura Lolita Chávez and other indigenous women of CPK (K’iche Peoples Council) with sexual assault when the women tried to stop illegal logging on their ancestral lands in El Quiché Dept.

assassination in Atlántico Department of Bernardo Cuero Bravo, attorney for AFRODES, the National Association of Displaced Afro-descendants, a coalition of 96 internally displaced Afro-Colombian organizations

hundreds of people from Laguna Larga, El Petén Department, stranded at the Mexico-Guatemala border in temporary shelters after 1,000 Guatemalan security forces carried out a massive eviction because of a long-standing land dispute involving a national park and an oil driller

police repression and injuries to the mostly Afro-descendant residents of Buenaventura in Valle del Cauca Department during a general strike and other protests for health, education, water and sanitation

arrest, detention and travel ban of César Geovanni Bernardez, director of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), which is in a legal battle to secure Garífuna (Afro-Caribbean people) lands against challenges by tourism developers

surveillance, attacks, and death threats against environmental and indigenous rights defenders Rodrigo Flores Peñalosa and Lucila Bettina Cruz Velázquez of the Tehuantepec Indigenous Peoples’ Assembly in Defense of Land and Territory (APIIDTT) in Oaxaca

Raids by Gaitanista paramilitaries threaten the mostly indigenous and Afro-descendant communities of the Jiguamiandó River Basin collective territory in Chocó Dept., near Pueblo Nuevo Humanitarian Zone (an official demilitarized safety zone)

attempted murder of Maynor López, son of human rights defender Francisca Ramírez, who is Coordinator of the Council for the Defense of the Land, the Lake and Sovereignty, active in organizing resistance to construction of the Nicaraguan Grand Inter-oceanic Canal

Death threats and harassment towards persons working in community radio stations (Radio La Voz Lenca, Radio Dignidad, Radio Progreso) that are reporting on environmental and indigenous rights issues and smear campaign targeting Jesuit priest Ismael Moreno, director of Radio Progreso.