Rapid Response Network

In December 2023, the Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods of Tocoa (CMDBCPT) called a popular assembly at which more than 2,000 local residents flatly rejected projects that are threatening the environment by three companies that have interlocking ownership: Emco Holdings (thermal electric generation), Inversiones Los Pinares (iron oxide mine), and Ecotek (pelletizing plant).  Six months later, the mayor of Tocoa in Colón Department collaborated with Ecotek to hold their own “cabildo abierto” (town hall meeting). The result? At a meeting without quorum or proper discussion—underming the democratic process and the will of local communities who have already demonstrated strong opposition to the project—the controversial energy plant was approved. 

The CMDBCPT contends that Mayor Adán Fúnez’s “open” meeting on June 13 was nothing more than a display of abuse of power and intimidation, reinforced by the presence of police and military forces in the community the night before.

We are deeply concerned about the continued persecution by the State of residents and leaders of Garífuna communities in northern Honduras. Police forces threatened and attacked Garífuna community members in Trujillo, Colón Department, on June 24, June 26 and again on June 30. Police officers surrounded and tried to intimidate Garífuna residents who are trying to recupérate their ancestral lands that were illegally taken by Randy Jorgensen, a Canadian investor in international toursism who has been accused of money laundering and fraud related to the sales of 140 tracts of land in Colón.

It is deeply troubling that political forces in Honduras are placing the private interests of criminals (narco-traffickers and money launderers) who want to construct tourist and residential developments on ancestral Garífuna territories above the needs of the Garífuna people.  We call on the government of Honduras to develop mechanisms to comply with the international rulings in favor of wrongfully displaced Garífuna communities, namely those made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

For over a decade, María Eugenia Mosquera Riascos has been accompanying peace-building efforts in the Pacific region of Colombia. She is a member of the Mesa de Acceso a la Justicia, Víctimas, Protección y Memoria (Roundtable for Access to Justice, Victims, Protection and Memory), which participates in the Comité del Paro Cívico de Buenaventura (Buenaventura Civic Strike Committee). She serves as the legal representative of Comunidades Construyendo Paz en Colombia (CONPAZCOL), a network of grassroots organizations composed of victims of Colombia's armed and social conflict, dedicated to building peace across 12 departments. CONPAZCOL has many international partners, including the US-based Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective and Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) Peace Presence.

On May 22 María Eugenia Mosquera was victim of an assassination attempt in Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca Department. We are urging that the US Embassy in Bogotá: (1) publicly condemn the assassination attempts and murders of CONPAZCOL members, emphasizing the urgent need for their protection and the importance of their work in the peace-building process; (2) press the Colombian government to implement comprehensive and effective collective protection measures for human rights defenders; and (3) increase support and resources for programs that strengthen the security and capacity of grassroots organizations in Colombia, ensuring they can continue their vital work without fear of violence or intimidation.

The Government Secretariat of Bogotá, capital city of Colombia, has identified five sectors of especially vulnerable populations at particular risk of human rights abuses:  human rights defenders, victims of human trafficking, LGBTI community members, former combatants in the reincorporation process, and victims of alleged abuse of authority.

Social leader Alba Rocío Riaño Nossa was vice-president of the Community Action Board of Verbenal Paraíso in Ciudad Bolívar, one of 19 localities in the Capital District of Bogotá.  On June 16, she was approached by two hitmen who shot her several times in the middle of a public road in the El Paraíso neighborhood of Ciudad Bolívar. Two of the shots lodged in her skull. She was rushed to the Meissen Hospital and placed in intensive care. She lost her life on June 24.

Several armed groups operate in Ciudad Bolívar, including a block of FARC dissidents and the paramilitaries Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces, which is known to outsource its work to other “bandas criminales.”  Alba Rocío Riaño Nossa had recently reported the sale of narcotics and other crimes committed by criminal groups in her neighborhood.

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.

As the State of Exception proceeds into its third year, and with the inauguration of Nayib Bukele to his second term as president, the government continues its political maneuvers to intimidate anyone who expresses political dissent.

During a two-day period before the presidential inauguration, the National Civil Police (PNC) and the Office of the Attorney General (FGR) carried out the arrests of eight war veterans who are all members of the National Alliance El Salvador in Peace. In the case of 72-year-old José Atilio Montalvo, a leader of the Alliance, his family states that longstanding health concerns caused him to retire from political life years ago and that he is incapable of planning any crimes of which he is being accused. He has limited mobility due to his chronic health conditions.

On June 19, the Human and Community Rights Defense Unit of El Salvador (UNIDEHC) denounced the imprisonment of José Atilio Montalvo, whom they consider a political prisoner, arrested arbitrarily and without evidence. Due to the political dimensions of the arrest of José Atilio Montalvo, we echo their concerns.

Because of his legitimate work in defense of human rights, Alberto Yepes Palacio, the coordinator of the National Observatory of Human Rights, has been subjected to threats, thefts, surveillance, and other acts of intimidation. In retaliation for his participation in the Roundtable on Extrajudicial Executions, which implicated the commander of the National Army, he and his daughter were threatened by the Black Eagles paramilitaries (as well as by agents of the Colombia Armed Forces). In 2021, he was victim of several incidents of surveillance over a two-month period.  

During the early afternoon of May 31, Alberto Yepes Palacio was meeting at a restaurant in Bogotá with delegates of social organizations and human rights defenders when three people barged in and stole his backpack containing his work computer, which contains sensitive information related to cases of human rights violations. Conducting such an action (in plain sight amongst a group of people in a public place in the middle of the day) shows the audaciousness of those who attack human rights defenders.

On June 5 attorney José Domingo Montejo was traveling on a dirt highway in Escuintla helping to legalize a land title in the area for campesinos. In a sudden ambush, armed actors shot and killed him and seriously injured Marcelo Yaxón Pablo and Gustavo Yaxón, active members of CUC (Comité de Unidad Campesina, or Peasant Unity Committee).

The assassination of José Domingo Montejo comes at a time of renewed attacks on Indigenous communities. Over a two-week period, the National Civil Police violently evicted Mayan Q'eq'chi families in Izabal Department (May 22) and Alta Verapaz Department (June 5). 

José Domingo Montejo was an ethnic Jakaltek (Jacalteco), of the Maya Q'anjob'al people who live alongside the border of Chiapas (southern Mexico) and Huehuetenango (northwestern Guatemala). He was well known and respect for his work defending the land rights of Indigenous and campesino communities.

Extractive projects are once again threatening the ancestral lands of Indigenous communities in Guatemala. The land conflicts we see today are rooted in the colonization of the 1500s, the civil war of the 1980’s and globalization of the 2000s that brought the full force of transnational exploitation. The cycle of inequality, discrimination, and displacement continues to be repeated. Although there are laws that uphold the right of Indigneous communities to be consulted about projects that will impact their lives, communities, lands, and futures, in practice the laws are almost always ignored. Some community leaders are calling the current destruction as “economic genocide.”

Armando Vásquez Pascual, along with other community authorities in Chinautla, Guatemala Department, has been actively protesting against sand and clay extraction companies operating without valid licenses for over two years on ancestral Indigenous Paqumam lands.  The damage to the environment, homes, and human health is significant. In a community that was once home to more than 150 families, today only 20 families remain.

The community’s years of peaceful resistance has received significant backlash, including criminalization, defamation, and death threats. On April 18, Denilson Alberto Vázquez Chacón, the sixteen-year-old son of Armando Vásquez Pascual, was fatally shot by assassins on a motorcycle. His brother, Lester Moisés Armando Vázquez Chacón, who was with him, was also seriously injured in the attack.

Indigenous territorial and environmental defenders in Guatemala continue to be persecuted with criminalization, threats, violence, and assassinations.

Environmental defender Tomás Domingo Mateo from the village of Pojom in San Mateo Ixtatán, Huehuetenango, has been one of many outspoken opponents of hydroelectric projects proposed by Energía y Renovación SA (owned by Corporación Castillo Hermanos) that threaten the environmental integrity and ancestral rights of the Indigenous communities. In 2013, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed US$13 million for the construction of hydroelectric power plants in the Indigenous Yichk’isis micro-region of  Huehuetenango Department. But in March 2022 IDB withdrew its financing after its independent investigative unit (MICI) determined that IDB had violated several of its own policies—sustainability, gender, environmental, cultural heritage, and Indigenous rights.  

In 2016 a sympathizer of Energía y Renovación SA in the village of Pojom alleged crimes of conspiracy and rape against Tomás Domingo Mateo and 22 other environmental defenders. A judge issued arrest warrants.  On April 14 of this year, police carried out the 2016 arrest warrant against Tomás Domingo Mateo and detained him.  After spending 25 days in detention, a judge ruled on May 10 that the charges against him be dropped for lack of evidence. 

We are urging that authorities in Guatemala (1) uphold its national and international obligations to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples to defend their ancestral lands and environment, (2) end the unjust criminalization of territorial and environmental defenders, and (3)        ensure that proper processes are followed (namely prior consultation and consent) when companies and international financial institutions propose any future megaprojects.