Rapid Response Network

We wrote to officials in Colombia expressing deep distress over recent attacks on the staff of CREDHOS (Regional Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights), an organization committed to the defense, promotion, and protection of human rights in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia since 1987. In recent months there has been an increase in threats and harassment to social organizations and human rights defenders in the Magdalena Medio region and in Barrancabermeja, Santander Department, where CREDHOS is based.  

On April 10, a bomb was placed outside the CREDHOS office in Barrancabermeja. One day later, armed civilians shot at CREDHOS staff while they were accompanying an administrative police procedure. Providing international accompaniment to the CREDHOS staff were two members of International Action for Peace (IAP) from Spain, clearly identified with vests as international peace accompaniers. It is our understanding that the National Police captured two of the assailants, charged them, and released them on April 13.

In addition to requesting that the government provide protection measures for CREDHOS staff, we are urging that authorities in Colombia investigate any patterns of victimization towards human rights defenders committed by irregularly armed civilians ostensibly organized in “citizen security fronts.”

On June 2, 2017, the families of Laguna Larga, El Petén Department, were forced to abandon their land when more than 1,000 Guatemalan security forces carried out a massive eviction, following a court order from a judge in San Andrés, El Petén. They soon arrived on the Mexican side of the border with Guatemala, near La Candelaria, Campeche State, and established an improvised camp after travelling by foot for at least a day across remote jungles. Although they were granted protective measures by the IACHR three months later, they have been living a precarious existence on the border ever since.

On April 21, 2023, Guatemalan security forces from the national pólice, the army and two other divisions forcefully aprehended three of the community members while they were tending to their crops:  Melvyn Geovanni Peréz Muralles (age 26), René Gutiérrez González (age 31), and one unnamed boy with the initials LRGB (age 11). Witnesses reported that a PNC agent held the eleven-year-old upside down and shook him violently. The agents transported the three to San Andrés, El Petén Department, to be seen before a judge, but we have not heard any news about the hearing or whether the three remain in detention.

Since January of this year, we have written letters to authorities in Honduras in response to eight assassinations of land and water defenders in the Aguán Valley. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona became the first defender killed in the Aguán Valley this year outside the departments of Colón or Atlántida.  He was murdered on Tuesday, April 18, after participating in a commemoration of the International Day of Peasant Struggle. The 64-year-old community leader had been active in his community’s fight for their land and water for more than 30 years in Olanchito, Yoro Department. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona was a member of the National Association of Honduran Peasant Farmers (ANACH), as well as the secretary of the campesino cooperative “Blessing of God #2.”

IRTF has great respect for Father Ismael Moreno Coto, the director of the independent media outlet Radio Progreso in San Pedro Sula. The Jesuit priest—known affectionately throughout Honduras as Padre Melo—was the keynote speaker at IRTF’s annual Commemoration of the Martyrs event in Cleveland in 2010, and our staff and IRTF friends have visited him and his staff at Radio Progreso multiple times over the past 14 years.

In a television broadcast on May 5, a TV anchor made a serious false accusation about Father Moreno.  It appears this was an attempt to shape public opinion against Padre Melo, to place doubt in the viewing public as to whether he is someone who can be trusted.  This broadcast comes at a time when Radio Progreso is experiencing a series of threats, extortions, computer hacks, and social media attacks. In a previous smear campaign a few years ago, Padre Melo was falsely accused of receiving "dirty money from drug-related activity and of using Radio Progreso to discredit Honduras."

We are urging that authorities in Honduras conduct a transparent investigation to learn who is behind the defamation campaign against Padre Melo and Radio Progreso.

The consolidation of power by the executive branch of Guatemala is threatening democracy and putting the country on a path toward authoritarianism. This month we wrote to the attorney general to express our disillusionment about politically motivated attacks on prosecutors and judges working to end impunity for serious human rights violations, especially those committed by former military personnel during the years of the internal armed conflict (1960-86), as well as attacks on journalists who report on these cases.

On 6:00am on March 16, police and Public Ministry officials arrived at the home of former prosecutor Orlando Salvador López, raided his residence, and arrested him. Orlando López formerly served as head of the Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office, where he helped build the prosecution for critical transitional justice cases like the case of the Ixil Genocide, for which former president Ríos Montt was found guilty in May 2013.  He has been made a target of pro-military factions within Guatemala, most notably the Foundation Against Terrorism (FCT), which currently is a plaintiff in a questionable legal case against Orlando López. FCT, working hand in hand with the Public Ministry’s Office, has led the charge to punish honest judges and prosecutors, nearly 30 of whom have been forced into exile. 

In a related case, the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI) announced that it is taking legal action against Francisco Dall’Anese, the former head of CICIG (Commissioner of the International Commission Against Impunity, 2010-13), who oversaw investigations into high-level corruption.

We are urging that authorities (1) end the use of criminal proceedings as reprisal against those involved in investigating and prosecuting cases of corruption or serious human rights violations, (2) ensure that judges and prosecutors are able to work freely without fear of reprisal, and (3) ensure free and fair elections during the election of Guatemala’s next president on June 25.

Energy generation is highly controversial in Colombia, whether it be from coal, gas, or hydroelectric. The controversy stems from the environmental, economic, and social impacts on local communities surrounding the energy plants. On the Magdalena River in Huila Department (southwest Colombia), artisanal fishers (i.e., small-scale) have been organizing against the El Quimbo hydroelectric project for the past 15 years. In 2008, the government have the energy company the green light to flood over 8,500 acres of land for the construction of the dam and power plant. The flooding displaced farming communities and harmed the local fishing industry.

ASOQUIMBO is the Association of People Affected by the El Quimbo Hydroelectric. Its spokesperson, Alirio Perdomo, is also president of the Association of Calandrero Fishermen of the Magdalena River.  Because of their efforts to have the government recognize the environmental and social impacts of the hydroelectric project, many ASOQUIMBO members have endured serious death threats and harassment, as well as the destruction of small crops on which the communities heavily depend. On March 28 at 5pm, Alirio Perdomo published a video publicly denouncing the levels of fish mortality in the Betania dam and the negative impacts on artisanal fishers due to "controlled discharges" from El Quimbo. Two hours later, while on his way into the city of Hobo, two men on a motorcycle shot at him, hitting his ear in an attempt to murder him.

The campesino families of Cooperativa Agropecuaria Los Laureles in the Bajo Aguá Valley (Tocoa Department) have been fighting for their land stolen by the agro-industrial company Dinant Corporation, owned by the family of the late land baron Miguel Facussé. They have been victims of forced evictions and their leaders have been falsely criminalied.  Good news was delivered to them on March 15: 16 members of the cooperative received a court-ordered dismissal of criminal charges of land usurpation that had been filed by Dinant and the Public Ministry. One of the 16 was posthumously acquitted; José Omar Cruz Tomé, former president of the Los Laureles cooperative, was assassinated on January 18 (cf our letter 22 FEB 2023).

Then just ten days later, they suffered a tragic loss when one of their family members was brutally killed. Armed men shot 22-year-old Emerson Martínez 14 times in broad daylight, just one-half block from his home on March 25. The killing of Emerson Martínez could be a warning sign directed at his step-father Abraham León, who is the spokesperson and legal representative of the Los Laureles cooperative. The family of Emerson Martínez has reported in the last few months of being monitored by unknown men, as well as surveillance by mechanical drones.

María Concepción Hernández and her husband Santos Ortiz, members of the Association for the Development of the Peninsula of Zacate Grande (ADEPZA), have been criminalized on multiple occasions for protecting their land and the privatization of public beaches on the peninsula of Zacate Grande in the community of Playa Blanca. On March 27, Santos H. Ortiz was arrested by Honduran police for unknown reasons. When María Concepción Hernández went to visit him in jail on April 1, she was arrested allegedly because of a pending arrest warrant dating back to August 29, 2019. The police refused to provide any information about their detention to their lawyers and colleagues from ADEPZA, only telling them that she had been transferred to Amapala on El Tigre Island, Valle Department.

Defenders of the ADEPZA organized communities, such as Santos Ortiz and María Concepción Hernández,  have been a benchmark of resistance against the territorial dispossession by large landowners who seek to monopolize all the lands at their disposal using violence, criminalization and corruption. We denounce the systematic judicial persecution against the defenders of the Zacate Grande peninsula, who also in recent weeks have faced a number of incidents in their communities.

The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia reported 614 cases of femicide in 2022. In April 2023, social leader Lilia Patricia Cardozo Cipamocha almost became another victim. She was walking through Santander Park in Tunja, Boyacá Department, on April 10 when at attacker threw acid on her, causing injuries to her face and chest. This attack occurred just five days after a man approached her while she was walking home, tried to attack her with a knife, and threatened to kill her.

Patricia Cardozo is the director of the Boyacense Feminist Platform (Plataforma Feminista Boyacense), an organization working to end domestic abuse, gender violence, and discrimination, including rescuing victims from the hands of abusers.  She has been under threat since 2022. 

In addition to urging that authorities investigate the threat (April 5) and attack (April 10), we are calling for ordination between the National Protection Unit (UNP) and the municipal government of Tujna to implement a protection scheme for Lilia Patricia Cardozo Cipamocha, in strict accordance with her wishes.

Since March 1 in Oaxaca, Indigenous campesinos with UCIZONI (Union of Indigenous Communities of the Northern Zone of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), havw been peacefully blocking a section of the Mogoñe Viejo-Vixidu railroad, which is being constructed in Indigenous territories without their free, prior and informed consent, as required by international law (International Labor Convention 169). The railroad, which will be protected with a militarized border, is intended to serve a commercial-industrial corridor through the Isthmus of Tehuantepec: commercial ports, highways, digital connectivity networks, a gas pipeline, and ten industrial parks. This mega-project poses risks to the livelihoods, preservation of territory, and the environment of the twelve Indigenous communities living in the area.

Construction of the commercial-industrial corridor is highly unpopular among Indigenous communities in Oaxaca. Their resistance has been met with attacks by civilians and state security forces, as well as stigmatization from high profile authorities from the Mexican government.

In the early hours of March 24, state police, along with a group of civilians, attacked the UCIZONI protest camp, leaving two people injured. This attack is one of 26 acts of aggressions levied against Indigenous rights defenders between October 2021 and March 2023, all related to the construction of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec railroad. Despite the attack by state police, the community has been able to keep its blockade of the railroad intact.