IRTF News

October 13 the U.S. announced that it will donate 95 vehicles, valued $4.4 million to the Guatemalan government.  

This concludes a 2019 proposal by the U.S. to donate equipment to Guatemala's border security forces.

The donation is funded through a Defense Department foreign military “capacity-building” authority established in 2017 as Section 333 of Title 10, U.S. Code, used as an alternative to the Foreign Military Financing program (FMF). Due to human rights and corruption concerns, there has been a prohibition on using  the FMF program to aid the Guatemalan security forces and military.

Payment for the vehicles is part of the U.S. defense budget and does not come from the dedicated annual foreign assistance appropriation. 

Journalists and activists criticize the aid for the border protection forces, fearing the equipment could be used to block migrants crossing the border, an act that is already in motion.

Besides the dangers for refugees and others transiting, the last money and equipment from the US government ended up being misused for intimidation against human rights and anti-corruption activists, a part of the ongoing crackdown on independent media and anti-corruption prosecutors and judges. 

All this is bad enough, but the track records show that the anti-drug efforts barely produce any fruit. Even though 90% of all cocaine entering the United States passes through Guatemala, only 7-15 tons were seized by Guatemalan police. This hardly makes a dent in the total cocaine trafficking and is far behind other South and Central American countries.

Topping this off is the fact that the Guatemalan state has the necessary financial resources to pay for the donated vehicles.

Just two weeks back the Guatemalan Congress passed a law, promising each veteran of the 36-year long civil war, the equivalent of $4,500 U.S. dollars. The bonuses will be handed out with no regard for war crimes or crimes against humanity that the ex-soldiers may have committed during the conflict. The total is around $450 million.

Spending this $4.4 million on military is obviously a mistake. The money could have been spent far better, helping the civil society and simultaneously achieving crime fighting goals. 

It could provide food security to half a million Guatemalans suffering from hunger. 

A more efficient anti-crime program than militant oppression is always prevention. Funding community-based violence prevention would reduce violent crime; making communities safer might discourage the population from emigrating. 

A further crime driving factor is the massive corruption keeping the country hostage. The U.S. budget could have been used to renew the 2010's efforts to strengthen Guatemala's judiciary, building an independent justice system, which is needed to reach a significant change in the rotting justice structures. 

Over all, it is obvious that the military aid would do more bad then good and that Guatemala's society is likely to keep suffering for years. 

Even though Halloween is past, another holiday season is almost knocking on the door and will push chocolate sales once more. Reason enough to shed light on the crooked dealings of the chocolate industry. 

The chocolate industry has been growing rapidly during the last few years and is expected to become a 180 billion USD industry by 2025. But this immense growth comes at a heavy price for the cocoa farmers and their families in the Global South who work for a minimal income to provide cheap chocolate for us. 

Next to the daily struggle to make ends meet, which drives up to 1.5 million children onto the fields in West Africa and Latin America, this industry poisons its workers.

More and more (small) farms have been giving into the pressure and have started using heavily hazardous pesticides as a means to maximize their yields. 

Due to weak regulations, Africa and South/Central America are lucrative markets for these pesticides, many of which are illegal in the United States and the EU. These bans don't exist without a reason. The pesticides can cause acute poisoning and chronic health issues. 

Especially children, pregnant women and their unborn are endangered by the chemicals. Adding to this is a lack of information about potential hazards which can arise and protective equipment for the workers on the fields. 

You can find more on the dangers of chemical pesticides, exploitation of the chocolate farmers and how you can help in the following article. The article also provides a table rating of different manufacturers and gives examples of fair and organic produced chocolate. 

October 15 is known as the Rural Women's day. 

El Salvador's State of Emergency, impeimented in March, has led to immense cuts in civil liberties.

It empowerd the police to arrest without warrents, causing 55,000 arrests since March.

This development alarms human rights groups, who criticise the curtailing of the right to a lawyer, the right to be informed about the reason for the arrest, detention for up to 15 days without charges and the reduction of the criminal responsibility age to 12 years. 

In spite of these criticisms, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly has voted in favor of an extension of the State of Emergency several times; recenlty on October 14.

To keep up with the masses of imprisonments, the government is building a new jail desinged to hold 40.000 suspected criminals.    

Fair Trade is so much more then a production standard. Fair Trade is a community effort, which seeks to empower workers from the farm to the store.

It promotes fair and prompt payment, develops transparent and accountable relationships and ensures environmental friendly production.

During the official Fair Trade Month IRTF and  the Fair Trade Certified™ community call for you to support our efforts to build a strong Fair Trade community!

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala,  urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

As Fiscal Year 2022 is almost over, we are hearing numbers of 750 or more migrant deaths over the past twelve months. While, tragically, it does still happen that migrants die while being chased by Border Patrol agents or shot when attempting to cross the border, the majority of these deaths are a result of the so-called “prevention through deterrence” strategy that forces people to take on more dangerous routes when traveling up to the southern U.S. border to seek safety. And if they do make it through to the U.S., they are often expelled immediately or put into deportation proceedings, waiting for their hearing in Mexican emergency shelters or U.S. detention centers. Read IRTF's monthly overview of recent updates on U.S. immigration and what has been happening at the border!

https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog/migrant-justice-newsletter-sep-2022

Dignity, justice, and criminalization in Guatemala.

The last few months in Guatemala have seen strong state repression against community leaders, activists, journalists, and human rights defenders. However, history shows us that the people rise up and resist in order to transform everything that oppresses; now more than ever we need international support and solidarity to accompany the peoples of Guatemala and the struggles they have waged for decades.

An unexpected turn hits the eight-year ongoing case of 43 missing students in Mexico.

The prosecutor in charge of the most notorious human rights case involving police, military officials, politicians and drug gangs, Omar Gómez Trejo, has quit. This follows disagreements with the Office of the Attorney General. 

Gómez Trejo spent more than three years investigating the case, winning judicial approval for 83 arrest warrants in the last month alone. During his investigation he was met with massive pushback by the attorney general's office, which pressured a judge to vacate 21 of the arrest warrants, 16 of which being military officials.

This resignation leads to people questioning the state's willingness to take on politicians, the police, and the military. 

Officially the government blames corrupt local police and politicians, as well as drug gangs, for the forced disappearance of the students, though independent experts have stated that federal and state army officials had knowledge of the kidnappings and did not intervene. Furthermore, a report accuses the police and army of covering the case up. 

So far the remains of only three of the 43 students have been found. 

This development comes in a charged time. Shortly earlier, Mexico's president Andrés Manuel López Obrador moved the formerly civilian controlled national guard to the army's command and has pushed the congress to extend the military mandate to law enforcement until 2028.

Critics fear that the reliance on the military for everything from arresting drug traffickers to building airports and operating seaports may lead Mexico’s democracy to slip away from civilian control.