Tag Archives: human-rights

Human rights and land rights defenders are still under attack in Guatemala

by Jim Hodgson

Despite the inauguration earlier this year of a more progressive government in Guatemala, community land defenders still face criminal violence and judicial threats.

The government of President Bernardo Arévalo condemned the murder June 5 of a 47-year-old lawyer who worked to protect Indigenous and small-farmer land rights.

José Alberto Domingo Montejo worked with the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC, Committee for Farmworkers Unity) and had been part of CUC’s legal team since 2019. 

Left: A poster from Prensa Comunitaria denouncing the murder of José Domingo. Right: a statement from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights upholding the right of small farmers’ organizations to work freely and safely, and calling for a fast and impartial investigation.

Domingo was shot during an ambush on a gravel road in Palin, Escuintla department, southwest of the Guatemalan capital. Two other CUC members, Gustavo Yoxon and Marcelo Yoxon, were wounded in the same attack.

They were doing what CUC and another organization with which I am more familiar, the Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA, Highlands Committee of Small Farmers) do all the time: working to advance the interests of small farmers and Indigenous peoples by helping to legalize a community land title. The CCDA condemned the attack and expressed its solidarity with families of the victims.

“This attack is added to the wave of violent judicial and extrajudicial evictions, captures and arrest warrants,” said CCDA in a statement on social media. 

The Pact of the Corrupt

Guatemala may have that more progressive government but Arévalo and his cabinet do not control all the levers of power. 

A key obstacle is Consuelo Porras, the attorney general appointed in 2018; her term was renewed in 2022 and extends to 2026; she can only be removed if convicted of a crime. 

Left: A CCDA news conference [text in English] on June 3 warned the “Pact of the Corrupt” tries to provoke confrontations between government and small farmers and Indigenous communities.

The U.S. Department of State added Porras to a list of “undemocratic and corrupt” officials in 2021. And last year, the Organization of American States (OAS) called her efforts to annul Arévalo’s election “an attempted coup d’état.”

“Porras has served as the spearhead of the Pact of the Corrupt,” wrote former Guatemalan foreign minister Edgar Gutiérrez in December while she was still trying to quash the election result. He described the Pact of the Corrupt as “a loose coalition of politicians, bureaucratic and business elites, plus powerful drug trafficking groups, which has pushed back civil and political liberties, unleashing fierce persecution against dissent, particularly against independent justice operators, who now number half a hundred in exile.”

For people in a community that is struggling to establish a land claim, even with good legal advisors from CCDA or CUT, it is often a challenge to identify opponents. One example is the Xinca Indigenous community of Nueva Jerusalén, located further south in the same Escuintla department where José Domingo was killed. By March 2023, the community had exhausted legal avenues within Guatemala (despite having shown the land in question belongs to the government and having proven irregularities in the claim of a supposed owner. After I had joined a meeting with community leaders and CCDA advisors, I wrote about the community’s appeal to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

But a few months later, on August 9, police and private security forces burned the community to the ground and forced the 53 resident families to flee. 

In these scenarios—and there are scores of them—it can be difficult to distinguish between a legal, court-ordered eviction (even if fraudulently obtained) and a private army: in effect, a paramilitary death squad. 

And so you find a paragraph like this one in an Amnesty International report that (correctly, in my view) blends the crimes of state and non-state actors. From the victims’ point of view, it’s hard to see the difference.

“The Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) reported 5,965 attacks against human rights defenders between January and November 2023, including threats, killings, harassment and arbitrary detentions. Criminalization increased, particularly against those involved in the fight against impunity and corruption.”

And this paragraph from a Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking The Silence (BTS) Network report on the Nueva Jerusalén eviction:

“[T]he state abets and perpetrates violence against the community. The police—the armed wing of the state—have…ransacked homes, destroyed possessions and sought to provoke community members to protect themselves. With this sleight of hand, they bring charges against community members, used to defame and criminalize the residents of Nueva Jerusalen.”

“Bringing charges.” “Criminalization.” 

Mélisande Séguin of BTS notes that land defenders continue to meet with government officials to stop future arrests. “Nonetheless, with Consuelo Porras at the helm of the Public Prosecutor’s office, criminalization remains a major threat for Indigenous and campesino movements.”

On Feb. 8, the new government signed an agreement with CCDA, CUT and other organizations of small farmers and Indigenous peoples. 

“For our administration, dialogue is not just a tool but a key pillar that promotes citizen participation in defining the agendas that effectively solve different needs,” said Arévalo during the signing ceremony. He said the agreement was the product of a dialogue process that began in the last quarter of 2023.

“All Guatemalans are equal in dignity and rights. The new government embraces the idea that everyone has something valuable to contribute and deserves to be heard,” he said.

Speaking at the ceremony, CCDA national coordinator Neydi Yasmín Juracán stated: “For us, it is a historic day because we have been meeting politically and technically for these agreements.” She said CCDA has worked for more than 28 years to prevent and end land evictions, but:

  • 12 community leaders were assassinated between 2018 and 2022.
  • Seven leaders are currently imprisoned.
  • 1,788 arrest warrants, 35 per cent targeting women.
  • Seven active temporary shelters to attend to agrarian conflicts.
  • 1,320 cases were accompanied by the CCDA.

Human rights, ecology, in the spotlight as Canada-Ecuador trade talks move forward

Behind all the bad-news headlines from Ecuador these days (political murders, gang violence, a government crackdown, a police raid on the Mexican embassy), Indigenous people and environmental groups continue to organize in opposition to resource extraction industries.

On April 21, they claimed victory when voters rejected two government proposals that would have fortified investments by transnational corporations and provided “flexibility” in their ways of contracting workers. Those victories, however, are overshadowed by approval of a range of security measures that, in turn, provoke greater concern about human rights under President Daniel Noboa.

Headlines in English about the April 21 referendum focused on President Noboa’s security agenda. La Jornada (Mexico) and TeleSUR (Venezuela) examined Noboa’s failure to advance his market-oriented economic agenda.

The proposals to expand public security that were approved include: involvement of the armed forces in fighting crime, increased penalties for serious crimes, the possibility of extradition of citizens to face charges in other countries, seizure of illicitly-obtained good, and restrictions on private ownership of weapons.

In contrast, the package of measures sought by corporations were rejected: international arbitration of investment and trade disputes, and a measure that would establish time-limited contracts and hourly-work—the “flexibility” to replace permanent, full-time jobs. 

Meanwhile, in the face of human rights and security concerns, Canada is pressing ahead with plans for a free trade agreement with the South American nation.

Canada’s objectives for negotiating this FTA look nice: “a modern, ambitious and inclusive trade agreement, reflecting the latest approaches, including in areas such as digital trade, trade and gender, environment and labour.” Mention is made of women, Indigenous peoples and labour rights.

But it is the experience of Indigenous people in Ecuador with Canadian mining companies and with the Chevron Texaco oil giant that drives opposition to free trade and one of its hallmarks: protection of foreign investors.

Canadians have seen the harmful effects of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) processes, both with corporate lawsuits against Canada and others involving Canadian companies overseas. (One of the latter with which I became very involved was that launched by mining companies against the government of El Salvador after it rejected an application to re-open a gold mine in Cabañas department. Salvadoran water defenders and their international allies won that fight, but such victories are rare—and our victory has provoked a cruel response by the present government.)

Stuart Trew of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) points to a “litany of expensive and controversial ISDS awards against Ecuador involving natural resources” that led the former government of Rafael Correa to withdraw his country from ISDS processes. Constitutional reforms in 2008 include a ban on such arbitrations, and it was this article of the constitution that the Noboa government sought to amend in the referendum. 

Throughout the lead-up to the vote, the Union of People Affected by Texaco/Chevron Operations (UDAPT), the Indigenous and peasant movement led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and others like Acción Ecológica campaigned to ensure the “no” vote.

On its website, Acción Ecológica maintains ongoing actions on mining, petroleum, protection of nature defenders, and free trade.

Christian Pino, a lawyer who specializes in investment law, welcomed the result, saying that approval of international arbitration of investment disputes would have benefited the transnationals and those Ecuadorans who hold their investments in offshore “fiscal paradises.”

I like to say that I have been fighting free trade since 1848, when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described it in The Communist Manifesto as “that single, unconscionable freedom” that drowns all others. But no: more like 1988, when Canadians gave Brian Mulroney a mandate to sign the first FTA with the United States, abandoning more than a century of caution in Canada-U.S. trade relations, transforming modes of production, and provoking the loss of more than 300,000 jobs. 

So this is not our first free trade fight or struggle to defend human and ecological rights in the face of resource extraction companies. As these FTA negotiations proceed, bear two things in mind: 

  • In the Harper years, when Canada was negotiating free trade with Colombia, we called for a “human rights impact assessment” (HRIA) but ended up with a fake mechanism that has failed to protect rights. 
  • We also pressed for a ombudsperson who could press for accountability by Canadian companies operating overseas so as to protect individuals and organizations who complain about abuses. But we ended up with a toothless office, the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE), that has no investigatory power.

CCPA, together with MiningWatch Canada and Amnesty International, have amplified the concerns of Ecuadoran organizations and shared them with Canadian parliamentarians.

While any Canada-Ecuador FTA cannot now include ISDS, the deal could still exacerbate the human rights situation in Ecuador.

“Amnesty International Canada’s Human Rights Agenda for Canada calls for guarantees that no free trade agreement will advance without meaningful consultation with affected Indigenous Peoples and their organizations and their free, prior and informed consent. The organization is also calling for credible, independent human rights and environment impact assessment of any proposed trade agreement,” states an April 30 news release from the three Canadian organizations.

We can do better this time.

No Ecuador trade deal without human rights, consultation and consent

If you too wish to express your concern about Canada’s free trade plans for Ecuador, Amnesty International has set up a page from which you can send a message to Trade Minister Mary Ng telling Canada to put human rights and the environment first.

Global allies stand with El Salvador’s water defenders

by Jim Hodgson

The global allies that united to accompany communities in El Salvador in their defence of water  resources against a Canadian mining company are working together again to defend five community leaders and to ensure that a national ban on open-pit mining stays in place.

Thursday, Jan. 11 marks one year since Antonio Pacheco and four colleagues were arrested in and near Santa Marta in northern Cabañas. 

On Jan. 5, 185 academics and lawyers, and 13 organizations from 21 countries sent an open letter to the Salvadoran Attorney General calling for the case against the five to be dropped. 

The five water defenders were FMLN combatants during the 1980-1992 civil war in El Salvador and are protected, the lawyers argue, by El Salvador’s internationally-recognized Peace Agreement and the National Reconciliation Law, both signed in 1992.

The lawyers’ letter says that Salvadoran prosecutors lack evidence, but the men – released from jail in September – still face charges of murder, unlawful deprivation of liberty, and unlawful association, alleged crimes that took place 33 years ago within the context of the civil war.

Rallies to support the Santa Marta Five are happening on Wednesday, Jan. 10 in person at the above-named locations at 4 PM local time. 

Water protectors in El Salvador say the arrests are politically motivated and a strategy to demobilize strong community opposition to mining as the government of President Nayib Bukele seeks to end the 2017 national prohibition of metals mining.

“The selective violation of the National Reconciliation Law to muzzle key leaders of the anti-mining movement while stifling any meaningful attempt to bring the largest perpetrators of human rights violations during the civil war – the Salvadoran military – to justice is a telling sign of the political motivations behind this case,” says the lawyers’ letter.

The perpetrators of the largest massacres of the civil war and of several high-profile assassinations have never been prosecuted in El Salvador. A series of massacres in northern Cabañas in late 1980 and in 1981 that led the people of Santa Marta and nearby communities to flee across the Lempa River into a six-year exile in Honduras have scarcely been investigated.

Late last year, an international delegation visited Santa Marta and other parts of El Salvador to look more deeply at the charges against the Santa Marta Five and the broader context of human rights violations in El Salvador. Their report “State of Deception: Fact Finding Report on the Detained Santa Marta Water Defenders, Mining, and the State of Human Rights under the Bukele Administration, will be released Thursday, Jan. 11.  

The report will show how Bukele has – in the words of Manuel Perez-Rocha of the Institute for Policy Studies – “reduced the independence of the judiciary, violated basic human rights, suspended civil liberties, and upended the rule of law.”

The United Church of Canada (my previous employer) has two funded partners in El Salvador. In 2019, when Emmanuel Baptist Church recognized its long relationship with the United Church, two colleagues from the Santa Marta Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES) travelled from Cabañas to San Salvador to join our celebration. Shown here are: Antonio Pacheco, the ADES executive director (one of the five men arrested a year ago); Kathy Brett, a member of the United Church’s executive; former Moderator Jordan Cantwell; ADES President Vidalina Morales; and Jim Hodgson, Latin America program coordinator at that time.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International have documented severe abuses of human rights under the guise of overcoming street-gang violence. Says Amnesty: “As of October 2023, local victims movements and human rights organizations had recorded more than 73,800 detentions, 327 cases of forced disappearances, approximately 102,000 people imprisoned – making El Salvador the country with the world’s highest incarceration rate – a rate of prison overcrowding of approximately 236%, and more than 190 deaths in state custody.”

Among the most recently-targeted is Rubén Zamora, the 81-year-old former politician and diplomat who was, for many, the public face of the coalition of groups aligned against the government during the civil war. Zamora was a Christian Democrat who left his party in 1980 over its alliance with the armed forces. He was a member of congress in the early 90s, and ran for the FMLN as its presidential candidate in 2004. 

After a life-long career in politics, Rubén Zamora served as El Salvador’s ambassador to the United States in 2013-14, and then served until 2019 as ambassador to the United Nations.

Absurdly, he is accused of helping to cover up one of the high-profile massacres – El Mozote in 1981, when about 1,000 people were murdered, the largest single massacre of civilians in modern Latin American history – by being a member of congress when the abysmal 1993 amnesty law was approved. But Zamora opposed that law and refused to add his signature to it once it was approved by other legislators. (That law was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016.)

ADES and other Cabañas organizations that support the Santa Marta Five have also called for support to Zamora. There is also an on-line petition that you can sign.