Rapid Response Network

We continue to be deeply concerned for leaders of the LGBTQ+ community. On March 17, Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández, the current representative of the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia to the Central Committee of Artists of the National Dance Council, was found dead at his workplace, his body showing signs of torture. He was an LGBTIQ+ activist on San Andrés Island, located 470 miles north of the Colombian mainland. Just three days prior, another musician, Fabián Pérez Hooker, was killed at his home, also on San Andrés Island.  Many musicians and other artists are involved in defense of environmental, cultural and social rights, and do work against violence and drugs. The killing of two artists on the same island in a matter of days is greatly troubling. Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández became the 42nd human rights defender assassinated in 2022. There have been 1,328 social leaders killed since the signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016. 

We wrote to President Bukele of El Salvador to express our concerns over the weakening of democracy in El Salvador, especially in light of the recently imposed State of Exception. Measures implemented by the Bukele government over the past three years mark a move away from democracy and toward more authoritarianism: militarized repression, the state surveillance of journalists and dissidents, and political persecution. After a shocking total of 62 murders were recorded from different parts of the country on March 26, the population woke up the next day to learn that a State of Exception had been put into effect. Since then, police and army troops have been deployed in gang-controlled areas, resorting to unnecessary and excessive use of force. More than 5,747 people have been detained without a warrant, and there have been reports of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Security forces are combing through poor communities and neighborhoods, searching the pockets of students, and mass arresting real or suspected gang members. All the while, journalists are told they are prohibited from reporting. We join with human rights organizations within El Salvador and across the world in calling for an immediate end to the State of Exception, which is an instrument of repression and social control that dangerously limits constitutional rights.

Women’s rights defender Yirley Judith Velasco Garrido, the legal representative of the Asociación Mujeres Sembrando Vida (Women Sowing Life Association), has been receiving death threats since 2019. A survivor of sexual violence in the El Salado massacre (Bolívar Department) of 2000,  Yirley Judith Velasco Garrido works with women from the region on behalf of victims of sexual violence in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia. Because her life has been threatened on multiple occasions, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favor of her and her family in 2020.

On March 21 she received a death threat by text message (“we will fill you with lead if you continue to defend bitches”), which included personal information about her. Using misogynistic language, it also threatened her mother and work colleagues. On March 25, her house was set on fire by unknown persons. Luckily, no one was home, and only material possessions were lost.

We wrote to officials in Honduras about the continued destruction of the 200-year-old Azacualpa community cemetery in La Unión, Copán Department. As we described in previous letters (cf December 2, 2021 and January 25, 2022), army and police were deployed to ensure the exhumations of graves, to facilitate 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).

On March 30, 2022, the State of Honduras ordered MINOSA to stop its operations. Given the history of this case, we are skeptical that MINOSA will abide. We are deeply troubled by the indifference with which the mining company reacts to the issued court orders. It shows clear disrespect for the Indigenous Maya-Chortí community whose loved ones have been exhumed and whose territorial rights have been violated.

Attacks against former FARC combatants who are integrated into the peace process continue at an alarming rate. About 300 have been killed since the signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016. On January 28, the Constitutional Court, noting that former combants’  “fundamental rights to life, personal integrity and peace … were ignored” by the Colombian state, ordered the government to take measures to protect the lives of former FARC combatants. On February 12, Jhon Sebastián Rivas and Leonardo Agudelo Murillo were with other members of Memoria Viva (a union which represents security personnel for former FARC combatants) in San Vicente del Caguán, Meta Department, to provide security to another former combatant, Lucila Moreno. TV news footage showed the police violently assault one of the men from behind. When the two tried to run away, police opened fire, shooting and killing a 14-year-old bystander.  Two days later, an armed group began distributing pamphlets, warning that Memoria Viva members should present their accredited weapons and vehicles or otherwise be “declared military objectives,” i.e. marked as targets of assassination.  

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.

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.

Catholic priest José Enrique Vásquez left his mother’s house after a visit at 10am on March 2, returning to his parish in San Pedro Sula, Cortés Department, for Ash Wednesday religious services. He never showed up. At 10pm that night, his lifeless body was entered at the morgue as an unknown person. There were six bullet wounds in his body, including two in the head and two in the chest.