IRTF News

Berta Cáceres, who was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, had long protested the construction of the dam, which threatened the livelihood of the Indigenous Lenca community living along the Gualcarque River. The activist was later shot dead in March of 2016 at her home in La Esperanza, in southwest Honduras. Private call logs, SMS, and WhatsApp messages unearthed by the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the hit squad “communicated through a compartmentalized chain that reached the highest ranks of leadership” of Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA), the company building the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, the Intercept reported on December 21. Seven of the eight men accused of carrying out Caceres’ killing — among them US-trained former military officials and DESA employees — were found guilty in November of 2018 and later sentenced to serve between 30 and 50 years in jail.

The 117-page report, “Deported to Danger: United States Deportation Policies Expose Salvadorans to Death and Abuse,” identifies cases of 138 Salvadorans who, since 2013, were killed after deportation from the United States, and more than 70 others who were beaten, sexually assaulted, extorted, or tortured. Perpetrators of these abuses include gangs, former intimate partners, and Salvadoran police or security personnel.

The Cleveland Immigration Working Group is engaged in a number of immigrant defense and support activities. We need more volunteer help. Please read below and consider helping with some of these needs: A. Safe Hotels Campaign B. Rapid Response Team C. Bond Packets for Release from Detention D. Court Monitoring E. Bus Reception F. Public Actions G. Sponsor Families H. Help for ICE Raid Victims and those in detention I. Prayer Support . If you would like to learn more about any of these initiatives, please email irtf@irtfcleveland.org or call (216) 961 0003.

3 men from Burkina Faso have been released from detention. The people in immigration detention centers are not seen as victims of violence and persecution, but as criminals who should be locked up. These immigrants from all over the globe—unjustly detained--need spiritual support to process all the extreme events of their escape from their home countries and subsequent internment.

Minister of Education Miriam Ráudez and the Nicaraguan Embassy in the United Kingdom are participating in the most important annual meeting on education in the world, the World Education Forum. It brings together education ministers and 1,263 representatives from more than 95 countries to discuss and enrich education policies, achievements, challenges and opportunities for the future of education. Nicaragua was recognized for its significant progress made in the last 13 years by the Sandinista government, through educational policies focused on ensuring access and universal coverage of free, quality education, focused on social justice, as a restitution of a human right, and as a fundamental factor in the eradication of poverty and inequality.

Making Way for Corruption details how in Guatemala and Honduras, corrupt officials in executive branches and legislatures are putting into place laws and policies to limit oversight and action by judicial authorities, human rights defenders, civil society activists, and journalists to expose and protest abuses, while sweeping away obstacles to their own corruption.

Making Way for Corruption details how in Guatemala and Honduras, corrupt officials in executive branches and legislatures are putting into place laws and policies to limit oversight and action by judicial authorities, human rights defenders, civil society activists, and journalists to expose and protest abuses, while sweeping away obstacles to their own corruption.

Last week the Special Justice for Peace excavated what could be Colombia's largest mass grave under State crimes known as "false positives”. The "false positives" scandal was a series of murders in Colombia, part of the armed conflict in that country between the government and guerrilla forces of the FARC and the ELN. Members of the military had poor or mentally impaired civilians lured to remote parts of the country with offers of work, killed them, and presented them to authorities as guerrilleros killed in battle, in an effort to inflate body counts and receive promotions or other benefits.