Rapid Response Network

Since 2017, Amnesty International and the Inter-Church Commission for Peace and Justice have documented a string of attacks and threats against Jani Silva, president of the Association for the Integral Sustainable Development of the Amazonian Pearl (ADISPA), a community organization managing the Peasant Reserve Zone of La Perla Amazónica in the municipality of Puerto Asís, Putumayo Department.  State protection under the National Protection Unit (UNP) has proven insufficient to prevent at least seven different security incidents against her. Since January 2020, she has experienced persecution, illegal digital surveillance, death threats, shots fired into her home, and she uncovered a plan for her own assassination.

On September 10, Jani Silva received a phone call threatening her life, in which the caller described a truck that was provided to ADISPA by the UNP and explicitly stated plans to blow it up with her inside. Later that same day, unknown men with high-speed motorcycles were seen on two occasions prowling around Jani Silva’s house and ADISPA’s office in the town center of Puerto Asís.

Given that in 2023 more environmental defenders were killed in Colombia than in any other country in the world, we are deeply concerned for the safety of Jani Silva.

Campesino land defenders continue to face great risks in Honduras: from large landholders, agricultural companies, and agents of the government—judges, prosecutors, and security forces like the National Police.

In the early hours of the morning of August 20, private security guards and employees of the sugar company AZUNOSA used excessive force to evict campesino families in La Sarrosa Village, in El Progreso, Yoro Department.  They beat, assaulted and seriously injured the families, using stones, machetes and firing firearms indiscriminately. Seriously injured was María Munguía Betancourt, who fell to the ground unconscious after receiving several blows with stones. For two hours, AZUNOSA employees blocked the main road, preventing the local fire department’s emergency medical team from providing assistance.

Campesino organizations are struggling for their legitimate right to land, food and a dignified life free of violence. The state must end its complicity in the harassment, stigmatization, and criminalization of campesino leaders, as well as its participation in violent evictions.

Campesino land defenders continue to face great risks in Honduras. Organizations like the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) hold large agricultural corporations and large landholders—like the infamous Dinant Corporation and its owners in the Facusse family—responsible for human rights crimes. They also decry collusion among those powerful economic interests, state security forces, public prosecutors, and judges who write illegal eviction orders.

As coordinator of the Campesino Movement of Ceibita Way (a local affiliate of the CNTC), Olman García Ortiz was dedicated to promoting access to land and land tenure for small farmers.  On the afternoon of August 4, hitmen shot him multiple times while he was riding his motorcycle in the village of Ceibita Way, municipality of Esparta, Atlántida Department. His lifeless body fell to the pavement. The CNTC reports that he had requested protection measures, but the government denied that request.

Honduras was recently ranked by Global Witness as the most dangerous place on the planet for environmental defenders, with the dubious distinction of more environmental defenders assassinated per capita than anywhere else on the planet.

In the community of Guapinol, it was clear that Juan Antonio López’s commitment to environmental stewardship was deeply rooted in his Catholic faith. He was actively involved in the church, serving as coordinator of Social Pastoral Care in the Diocese of Trujillo and co-founding the Integral Ecology Pastoral care in Honduras.

In August 2018, he and other residents of the community of El Guapinol in Tocoa, Colón Department, organized a peaceful encampment to block construction of an iron oxide mine inside the Carlos Escaleras Mejía National Park. The extraction project would threaten animal life and contaminate small rivers (water sources for 13 communities) that empty into the Río Aguán, placing 90,000 inhabitants at risk of losing their agricultural crops and homes. In late October 2018, police and 1500 heavily armed members of the Army, Cobras (militarized anti-riot police units) violently broke up the encampment with rifles, shields, clubs and tear gas bomb—beating and detaining the encampment residents. Juan López became one of 32 Guapinol residents criminalized for their protest. Eight of the defenders (the Guapinol 8) were unjustly imprisoned for 914 days.

Tragically, on September 14, 2024, Juan López (a 46-year-old husband and father) joined the list of martyrs in Guapinol who have been assassinated for their environmental defense, a list that includes: Levin Alexander Bonilla (October 27, 2018), Arnold Joaquin Morazán Erazo (Oct 13 2020), Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla (January 7, 2023), and Oquelí Domínguez (June 15, 2023).

Local bishops, the bishops conference of Latin America, and even Pope Francis have publicly decried the assassination of Juan Antonio López and called for justice.

assassinated: young, gay defender of environmental and human rights Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez

The killing of 34-year-old Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez is a significant loss to the rural community of Los Laureles in Danlí, El Paraíso Department. It highlights the dangers faced by those who stand up for human rights in Honduras. His commitment to his community and his work as a journalism student highlight the importance of protecting those who strive for transparency and justice.

Erlin Asbiel Blandín Álvarez was home for the weekend from Tegucigalpa, where he was enrolled in his final year as a journalism student at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). Openly gay and well-respected by his neighbors, he was committed to advocating for essential community resources, including management of a water project and bringing awareness to the trafficking of migrants through El Paraíso. So deep was his commitment that he was serving as president of the community board of Los Laureles.

On Sunday morning July 14, when he went outside his home to work on a shed that he was building, assailants arrived on motorcycles and in an ATV.  Neighbors and family heard the gunshots and cries for help. They arrived only to see the assassins flee at high speed in their vehicles. Erlin Asbiel Blandín Álvarez died moments later, with gunshot wounds to his chest and shoulder.

Erlin Asbiel Blandin Alvarez, ¡presente!

Living and working in a rural hamlet called La Gabarra, young community journalist Jorge Méndez, known as “Yeiko the leader,” had 650,000 followers on Facebook. Because his home region along the Venezuelan border had such a negative public image due to years of armed violence, Jorge started the page "La Gabarra con una imagen diferente," with content that was positive and favorable to the region.

In a country dangerous for social leaders and journalists, Jorge Méndez sadly became another victim. On the morning of June 27, Jorge was traveling along a road in a rural zone of Tibú, Norte de Santander Department. Local residents later found his car abandoned and alerted the police. They began a search and found his body with multiple bullet wounds and signs of torture.

After learning of his assassination, a social leader from La Gabarra commented: “He was a young dreamer, a young man who wanted to show a different image of La Gabarra, show its resilience, show the beautiful things, its people, its landscapes, its nature, he sought to remove that stigmatization of La Gabarra, which for many years [from] the outside looked like that image of violence that has plagued it for years…”

Jorge Méndez, ¡presente!

The pattern of persecution against anti-corruption defenders in Guatemala must end.

As head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI), former public prosecutor Virginia Laparra had led investigations into corruption and large-scale crime. While leaving her office in Quetzaltenango on February 23, 2022, she was arrested, detained and arraigned on trumped up charges. She spent almost two years in pretrial detention. On July 8—without sufficient evidence or due process of law—Virginia Laparra was convicted of disclosure of confidential information and sentenced to five years (commutable at the rate of 5 quetzales per day) and a fine of 50,000 quetzales (approximately US$6,500). In addition, the conviction bars her from practicing law for five years and disqualifies her from holding public office for ten years.

Her conviction on July 8 is part of an ongoing pattern of criminalization of human rights defenders, journalists and others who have been fighting against corruption and impunity to make the mechanisms of justice possible. Because of the ongoing climate of persecution of anti-corruption law defenders, Virginia Laparra announced on July 18 that she would flee the country. Her exile means that she will join more than 50 other members of the judiciary, journalists, Indigenous leaders and others who have fled the country (2019-2023) after denouncing harassment against them by the Public Ministry.

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.

Because of the violent history associated with large-scale mining operations in their communities, Tolupán Indigenous residents in Yoro Department are anxious and fearful because of renewed illegal mining in San Francisco de Locomapa. In recent years, many Tolupán defenders in Yoro have been harassed, threatened, criminalized and even killed. In January 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expanded protective measures to include a total of 97 members of the Tolupán community in San Francisco de Locomapa. This underscores the severe risks they face. 

The main culprit had been the US-owned Lachansa mining company, which in theory has now left the area. They have a reputation of creating  armed groups to generate violence and intimidate residents opposed to his company’s mining operations. It is deeply concerning that despite legal actions filed against the owners of Lachansa and the company’s supposed exit from the community, illegal mining operations are recurring.  The more recent illegal mining of antimony is  spearheaded by people who have been linked to previous unlawful mining activities. The mining is occurring without the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of the Tolupán community, violating their fundamental rights and sovereignty over their ancestral lands. The devastating environmental impacts of open-pit mining are of great concern to the Tolupán communities. 

Because of his bold leadership in protecting the Wayuu people, Javier Rojas Uriana has suffered many reprisals: assassination attempts, death threats, slander, and trumped-up legal charges. For more than a decade, Javier Rojas Uriana has denounced the humanitarian crisis facing the Wayúu people, the largest Indigenous community in Colombia. Where they live in La Guajira, the department with the highest prevalence of food insecurity, extreme climate phenomena have been causing droughts and heatwaves, affecting food staples such as rice and corn. Their economy—based on artisanal fishing, sheep and goat breeding, and handicraft production—has been disrupted. Child malnutrition is reaching alarming levels.

On July 2 while he was in Valledupar, the capital city of Cesar Department, Javier Rojas Uriana suffered an assassination attempt when assailants targeted him with an explosive device.  Fortunately, he was not injured in the vicious attack. We are urging that the National Protection Unit (UNP) review and reinforce its protection measures for Javier Rojas Uriana and his family, in strict accordance with their wishes.