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News Article
The RENACER Act would place more unilateral coercive economic measures (aka Sanctions) on Nicaragua, facilitate greater coordination of the US’ economic war on Nicaragua with Canada and the European Union, create stricter oversight of financial institutions doing business with Nicaragua and impose greater visa restrictions.
News Article
'It’s the support of our rural community of Elmvale that’s really given us the drive and the spirit to keep going,' said Elmvale resident Janet Spring, who is watching from afar the trial of her son-in-law in Honduras
News Article

On two occasions, police patrol cars of the National Police went to the house of the Guapinol River defender Juana Ramona Zúñiga, asked for “Monchita” and told her that they had been ordered to pass by her house as a measure of her safety by the National Mechanism for the protection of Human Rights. We warn about this irregular action and not authorized or requested by the defender or her organization. Once again we add this act to the harassment and surveillance that the police exert on the Guapinol community and on Juana Ramona and her daughters, in particular. It should be noted that members of the police took photos of the defender and her home.

News Article
Nayib Bukele, the forty-year-old President of El Salvador, has been in office since 2019 and has a reputation for what is referred to as “millennial authoritarianism.” He often wears a baseball cap backward on his head, he once pronounced himself the “coolest President in the world,” and he recently made Bitcoin a legal national currency. He tends to find ways to get what he wants. In February of last year, he coerced support for a security-budget loan by surrounding the Salvadoran legislature with snipers and invading it with armed soldiers. This May, with several of his executive orders being challenged as unconstitutional, and a number of his ministries under financial investigation, he replaced the attorney general and all five judges of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, the nation’s highest, with political allies. The newly appointed judges then voided El Salvador’s ban on Presidential second terms. But, on August 31st, Bukele made an announcement that many consider to be of a different order. Late that evening, the legislature, which his party dominates, passed a law forcing all judges over the age of sixty, or those with more than thirty years of service, to retire immediately—effectively allowing Bukele to replace a third of the country’s judges. Carlos Dada, the founding editor of El Faro, a prestigious Salvadoran online investigative-journalism outlet, told me that Bukele has “grabbed all power,” adding that “he has the military and the police in his pocket. The President takes care of them—they take care of the President. He now controls the courts. arena and the F.M.L.N.”—the two main opposition parties—“have been destroyed, and he has an absolute majority in congress. He no longer has any opposition except the N.G.O.s and journalists.”
News Article
From the September 2021 newsletter of Jubilee House/Center for Development in Nicaragua: The first Sunday in November Nicaragua will have its general elections. If you keep up with international news you may be reading a great deal of misleading information. After the attempted coup in 2018, everyone who had been arrested - whether it was for vandalism, looting, demonstrating without a permit, blocking roads, torture, or even murder - was granted provisional amnesty. The provision was that if they broke the law again, they would be arrested and stand trial. That seems logical…and generous…and yet many of these people who committed crimes before and were released are now breaking the law again and as a result are being arrested, while the international press continues to scream “repression.” Of course we do not know all the people arrested. We do not know all the crimes they are charged with, but we do know that the United States State Department had a paper leaked in 2020 that outlines how the State Department plans to disrupt the elections here and if the Sandinistas are elected again how the U.S. plans to create violence and havoc attempting to accomplish another coup since the one in 2018 failed.
News Article
Social movement organizations in El Salvador are on high alert following a Supreme Court ruling on Sept 3 that would enable President Bukele to seek a consecutive term in office, despite multiple and explicit prohibitions in the Constitution against consecutive presidential reelection, including Article 88 which requires “alternance” in the exercise of the presidency. Though the ruling does not come as a shock, as the president’s intentions to remain in office were already clear, it affirms fears that El Salvador’s postwar democracy has entered free fall and that Bukele is successfully clearing the road of any legal challenges to his consolidation of power.
News Article

Ciudad Jaraguá is a luxury residential complex, developed by the Inversiones MPG and Inversiones en Activo group, located in San Pedro Sula, on the forested slopes of El Merendón. Local residents have been protesting this development for the past several months because the exclusive housing complex is destroying the El Merendón forest reserve, considered the lungs of the country's industrial capital. Hundreds of families are being impacted. Water sources are harmed. There is structural damage to the homes of local families caused by the use of dynamite. Without any consideration for the flora or fauna, developers are causing significant deforestation. On September 3, while covering the protests, journalist Deyni Menjivar was obstructed by security guards, who harassed and threatened her. The TV news reporter, accompanied by her cameraman, was intercepted by a guard, who aggressively ordered her to stop recording and immediately leave the premises, because if she did not do so, "she was going to get into trouble."

News Article

Emma Banks details the findings of #MisionSOSColombia, an international verification mission investigating human rights violations since the protests began on April 28. #MisionSOSColombia built on the findings of three similar preceding missions, covering a wider geographic area and collecting hundreds of personal testimonies that demonstrate the systematic political and violent repression of protests in Colombia. It found clear evidence of disproportionate use of force by police, violence from paramilitaries and armed civilians, and arbitrary detentions of protestors. #MisionSOSColombia calls on the Colombian government to immediately halt their efforts to end the protests through violence against protestors and the persecution of social movement leaders. The international community must demand that the Colombian government comply with the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. International allies of the Colombian government should cut aid packages if human rights abuses continue.

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