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IRTF is grateful to the 200 supporters who gathered on October 27 at Pilgrim Church in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood for IRTF’s annual Commemoration of the Martyrs. In addition to marking the 44th anniversary of the martyrdom of Cleveland’s missioners in El Salvador (Jean Donovan and Sister Dorothy Kazel, alongside Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke), we commemorated 36 human rights defenders killed in Central America and Colombia this past year because they dared to speak truth to power.

Our keynote speaker, Lorena Araujo of the largest campesino organization in El Salvador (CRIPDES), held the crowd’s attention with horrific stories of mass arrests, detentions and deaths currently happening under their government’s State of Exception, now in its third year. With more 88,000 imprisoned (and more than 300 deaths in prison), El Salvador now has the highest incarceration rate in the world—surpassing the astronomical rate of incarceration in the United States. 

As the people of El Salvador face the greatest challenge to their democracy since the end of the civil war in 1992, they invite us to renew and deepen our solidarity.

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News Article
José Rubén Zamora is the founder and publisher of elPeriódico, a leading newspaper in Guatemala that aggressively investigated government corruption.
 
He was convicted last year of money laundering, sentenced to as many as six years in prison and fined about $40,000. He called the charges politically motivated and said they were retaliation for his newspaper’s focus on public corruption. The case became a sign of crumbling democracy in Guatemala and a symbol of threats against press freedom across Latin America.
 
After the election of Bernardo Arévalo, an anti corruption crusader, and 810 days in a cramped cell, he was released to house detention on Saturday night as he waits to find out whether he will be granted a new trial.
 
The IRTF wrote several letters about Zamora as part of the Rapid Response Network, these are two of them:
News Article
Juan Antonio López was a prominent environmental defender, anti-corruption activist, and community and faith leader in Tocoa, Honduras. He was shot and murdered by an unidentified hitman in his car after attending a religious event at a local Catholic church.
 
This article remembers his firm activism and life. 
 
IRTF also wrote a letter about him as a part of our Rapid Response Network.

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