IRTF News

COFADEH documented the case of José Antonio Torres Meza, 40 years old, originally from Catacamas, Olancho. He lived 11 years in exile, until last February 11, when he entered through the customs of El Amatillo to attend his mother's funeral, but was captured. He was being prosecuted since August 2009, for the alleged crimes of terrorism and aggravated arson to the detriment of the State of Honduras, the group Industrias Turísticas (INTUR) and Ladislao Augusto Servellón Aguilar. The Public Prosecutor's Office, who accused Torres 12 years ago, had no choice but to follow COFADEH's demand for release and Judge 2 of the Criminal Court of Tegucigalpa ruled the immediate release of the victim, which will be effective tomorrow.

The Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras declared the Law for the Protection of Plant Varieties, also known as the Monsanto Law and approved by the Congress of the Central American country in 2012, for unconstitutional. As of this legislation, it was prohibited to save seeds, give them away and exchange them. This initiative took place within the framework of the advance of the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), an organization that works exclusively and explicitly for the privatization of seeds throughout the world, through the imposition of intellectual property rights on plant varieties. The Honduran State is one of those that signed the UPOV Convention. The National Association for the Promotion of Ecological Agriculture (ANAFAE), a group that has defended organic agriculture and food sovereignty in Honduras for more than 25 years, has been denouncing this law since it was approved and in 2016 had filed a legal appeal to declare it unconstitutional, which was rejected. Two years later, groups of peasants and independent producers presented a new appeal, which led to the declaration of unconstitutionality of the law last November and publicly communicated at the end of January of this year. 

The January inauguration of Xiomara Castro Sarmiento Zelaya from the Liberty and Refoundation Party was a political landmark in Honduras. Castro became the Central American country’s first female president, winning 51.12 percent of the vote. She has promised to convene a National Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution. “For us to have the first female president in Honduras means 67 years of struggle (since it was in 1952) that us women fought for the right to be citizens — for the right to vote and the right to be voted for,” Wendy Cruz, member of the international peasant movement La Vía Campesina, told Truthout. Castro campaigned on an agenda that will strongly empower lower-income Honduran women, who have been one of the hardest-hit sectors in a country ruled through aggressive neoliberal policies for the last 12 years. Castro’s task of governing will be particularly hard given the high levels of corruption and ties to the drug trade that have been linked to Honduras’s former president, Juan Orlando Hernández.

Mayan indigenous communities in eastern Guatemala are waging an ongoing struggle for the defense of their lands and resources, in the face of encroachment by mining, power and oil corporations. These struggles have resulted in protests on behalf of the affected communities and against the Guatemalan government's repression of activists and indigenous inhabitants, and have now reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Colombia’s constitutional court voted Monday to decriminalize abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, a transformative shift for the majority-Catholic country and the latest sign of a turning tide in Latin America. The ruling makes Colombia the third large country in the region to decriminalize the procedure in slightly more than a year, after Mexico and Argentina, a development that appeared unlikely just a few years ago. Abortion rights activists said it could fuel further gains for abortion rights in the region. Since 2006, the procedure has been permitted in Colombia in cases of rape, nonviable pregnancy and when the life or health of the mother was in danger. At the time, those rules positioned the country as a regional leader in abortion rights. But between 2006 and 2020, the court heard, nearly 3,000 people were prosecuted for having an abortion. More than 90 groups filed a lawsuit in September 2020, arguing that the criminalization of abortion exacerbates the stigma around the procedure and creates barriers to access, even for patients who qualify under the exemptions.

Sister Dianna Ortiz was a catholic nun and - after being tortured in Guatemala - became a human rights and anti-torture activist. As a teenager, she joined the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph and taught kindergarten for several years before moving to Guatemala in 1987 at the age of 28, where she wanted to teach indigenous children. With the 36-year civil war following the 1954 CIA coup not far in the past, it was a dangerous time to work with the oppressed people in Guatemala. In 1989, Ortiz was kidnapped and tortured for 30 hours, and returned back to the US after that. In her desire to defend human rights and torture victims, Dianna Ortiz founded Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC) - the first organization led by torture survivors to support other survivors - in 1998, continuing to advocate against torture and seek justice for what happened to her in 1989. After a battle against cancer, Dianna Ortiz died on February 19, 2022, at the age of 62. But her legacy continues to live - it is a witness to suffering the unimaginable and coming out on the other end with love.

The Court of Appeals of Francisco Morazán, in respect to the resolution of the Constitutional Chamber that annulled the criminal proceeding against the eight defenders of Guapinol, resolved the appeals filed by the defense on March 3, 2020, in relation to the indictment for the crimes of unjust deprivation of liberty and aggravated arson. Said court ordered that the proceedings be sent back to the court of origin, which is the Court of Trujillo. It should be noted that this judicial body has tried by all means to keep the defenders in prison despite the fact that it has never had any argument to do so, much less after February 9 of this year when the Constitutional Chamber admitted two appeals filed by the defense against the indictment and the denial of the change of measures of preventive detention to defend themselves in freedom.

The new e-book, International Solidarity in Action: The Relationship Between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and Frente Auténtico del Trabajo, by Robin Alexander tells some of this history from a first-hand perspective. As the first International Affairs Director of the UE, Alexander was there at the start of cross-border labor union campaigning against NAFTA, through to the deal’s 20-year anniversary. It was their shared opposition to NAFTA that led the UE and the FAT, both independent unions, to develop a close working relationship, beginning in 1992. As Alexander details, the bonds between the two unions soon became much closer, and their combined efforts came to include support for shop organizing, strike support, fundraising, labor law reform, and other activities. Along the way, the FAT and other independent unions in Mexico scored historic victories, leading eventually to the labor law reforms that made organizing wins, like the one at Silao, possible. These included holding the first secret-ballot union election in Mexico’s history (in the early ‘90s), and, along with the UE and other unions such as the Teamsters, lodging some of the first complaints under the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), NAFTA’s labor side-agreement, in attempts to defend workers’ rights (in 1994).

Oregon’s U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-09) today led a group of 21 lawmakers in urging the Biden administration to form a strong partnership with Honduras’ new leader, President Xiomara Castro. In a letter sent to Secretary Antony Blinken, the bicameral group of lawmakers emphasize the urgency of U.S. and international backing for Castro’s platform of human rights, economic, and anti-corruption reform, including her pledges to strengthen human rights protections, form a new, United Nations-led anti-corruption commission, and combat poverty and inequality. They encourage the administration to seize the opportunity presented by new Honduran leadership to seek a fresh and more constructive pathway for U.S.-Honduran relations, one that prioritizes human rights, respect for the rule of law, and inclusive economic development that all Hondurans deserve.