IRTF News

Environmental activists Fabian Urquijo and Jhordan Peinado, who hail from Colombia’s Santander region, received an eerie warning in February. They were named in a pamphlet shared by the Gulf Clan paramilitary group, warning that they would be killed if they did not give up their activism. More than 20 other local activists were also named in the pamphlet, which was distributed throughout their neighbourhood. Many Colombian activists are increasingly worried that they could be targeted for their work, as recent data from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and Corporacion Compromiso, a local NGO, reveal a sharp increase in threats and violence towards environmental defenders. The stakes for activists in Santander are especially high. Over the past 18 months, the JEP recorded more than four dozen threats against activists across the region.

The Government Accountability Office, in a little-noticed report released late last month, informed lawmakers that the Border Patrol “has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths.” The omission included data the Border Patrol was required to track and turn over under legislation passed last year. The law specifically obligates the agency to include data collected by entities other than the Border Patrol itself in its reports on migrant deaths. The failings mark the first public government assessment of the agency’s response to the new legal requirements. “It confirms something that we suspected for a long time,” Daniel Martínez, an associate professor at the University of Arizona and one of the world’s leading experts on migrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert, told The Intercept. “We’ve known this for a while — that the Border Patrol is not doing an effective job of counting the dead.”

Mario Membreño, member of the national coordination of the Convergence Against Continuity (CCC), appeared on the program Voices against Oblivion, to analyze the issue of the first 100 days of the government of Xiomara Castro. An editorial of the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (COFADEH), entitled "The three months of the government in Alliance and Justice", refers to the inaccuracy by the media to promote the evaluation of the famous 100 days of government of Xiomara Castro, considering that after the departure of the narco-dictator, the nationalist Juan Orlando Hernández, the nation was left bankrupt, its territorial sovereignty exposed and with high rates of poverty and corruption. The editorial points out that "that is why we have insisted that these are not the first 100 normal days from one government to another, this is the transition from a 12-year corrupt and drug-trafficking dictatorship to a popular government."

Far from providing tools to protect citizens from violence, the state of emergency has represented a threat to everybody’s human rights. The government seems to be using it as an excuse to introduce unwarranted restrictions on human rights and civil liberties, to further its campaign to  silence political opponents, civil society organizations, and independent media, taking over the judiciary, and seeking other self-serving purposes. The introduction of legal reforms such as those made to the Penal Code on April 5 to criminalize media or journalists who “reproduce and transmit messages from or presumably from gangs that could generate uneasiness or panic in the population” are a clear illustration of the lengths Bukele is prepared to go to in order to ensure nobody criticizes him.

Another Mexican journalist has been found dead, marking the ninth death of a media worker this year and raising the death toll to an estimated 34 in the current president's term. US senators Tim Kaine and Marco Rubio called on the US to urge Mexico to do more to protect journalists in February, criticising López Obrador for lashing out against his critics in the media.

In scenes that were chillingly reminiscent of the 1980s, in the midst of the ongoing State of Emergency in El Salvador, the state put up many now-standard obstacles to those who came out to march: intimidating searches by the military and over 20 police barricades blocking highways and turning away buses across the country. But the people were determined. With tremendous courage, labor unions and popular organizations held fast to their claim to May 1 as thousands took to the streets.

Reproductive rights activists across Latin America have vowed to protect hard-fought gains in their own territories as they brace for potential ripple effects if the US supreme court overturns Roe vs Wade – the 1973 ruling which guarantees the right to abortion. Latin America has some of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the world. But feminist movements have fought for decades to chip away at the prohibitions, and in recent years a younger, diverse generation of activists has mobilized in massive numbers to help clinch a string of victories in traditionally conservative countries.

Nicaragua's parliament has voted in favour of shutting down 50 non-governmental organisations. Among the NGOs shut down on Wednesday are groups defending human rights, organisations providing medical help and those promoting educational projects. They range from a group representing dental surgeons to one promoting the rights of girls. The parliament, which is dominated by allies of President Daniel Ortega, said the NGOs had failed to comply with regulations. But government critics say the move is part of a larger crackdown on opponents of the president, which has seen 144 NGOs banned so far this year.

On April 25, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly extended for another 30 days a state of emergency enacted the month prior in response to escalating gang violence. Since enacting the state of emergency on March 27, the Legislative Assembly has gone on to approve a series of measures proposed by President Nayib Bukele that allow judges to imprison children as young as 12, restrict freedom of expression, and dangerously expand the use of pretrial detention and counterterrorism legislation. More than 17,000 have been arrested under the degree, which restricts the right to gather, to be informed of rights upon detention, and access to a lawyer, as well as allows phone calls and emails to be intercepted without a court order. CISPES shares excerpts of an analysis of the situation by human rights experts in El Salvador.