Rapid Response Network

The 26 tribes of the native Tolupán peoples who live on ancestral lands throughout Yoro Department are organized in the Federation of Xicaques of Yoro Tribes (FETRIXY). The Tolupán communities are constantly organizing to defend their ancestral lands from the economic interests of outsiders: large private landholders, hydroelectric dam companies, mining companies, and the timber industry. After the election of new tribal leaders on March 26, there has been increased pressure from logging companies to threaten and discredit the Tolupán tribes. The newly leadership has asked the National Institute for Conservation and Forest Development (ICF) to not receive or process any requests for forest management plans in the territory that corresponds to the tribe of San Francisco de Locomapa. This has angered logging industry executives.

At particular risk is Tolupán tribal leader José María Pineda and his family in San Francisco de Locomapa, Yoro. Criminal groups at the service of the timber industry have publicly stated that they would look for José María Pineda and his daughters to attack them and burn down their house.

As part of the 2016 Peace Accords, many FARC combatants who agreed to put down their weapons enrolled in the formal reincorporation process, to re-enter society as ex-combatants. Some organized themselves into the National Living Memory Union of People's Security and Protection Workers. As experts in security detail, Living Memory (Memoria Viva) members often contract as security personnel (bodyguards) with government agencies, such as the UNP (National Protection Unit). Recently they have been the subject of stigmatization resulting from false allegations made by UNP during labor contract negotiations.

Diego Mauricio Mejía Rojas, a member of the National Council of the Memoria Viva Union, became the eighth member of Memoria Viva killed since the union was established five years ago when he was shot by two persons riding on a motorcycle in Puerto Asis, Putumayo Department, on April 9. Four days later, there was an attack against another Memoria Viva member, Jhon Jader Ferreyra, in Ibague, Tolima Department.

We are urging that authorities in Colombia: (1) investigate the attacks on these two union members, (2) instruct the UNP to negotiate in good faith and stop making false statements against the union, and (3) fulfill the government’s commitments made in the Peace Accords and work to end violence against Memoria Viva union members and against all signatories of the Peace Accords

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.