Tag Archives: #HumanRights

Ecuador bans opposition party, criminalizes ecological defenders, joins U.S. military attacks

by Jim Hodgson

In a just world, news that Ecuador has banned its largest opposition party would be enough to scuttle Canada’s plans for a free trade agreement with the country – and even end U.S. military collaboration. But that is not the world we live in.

The news came as 77 organizations from Ecuador, Canada and around the world sent a letter to Canada’s ambassador in Ecuador urging the embassy to adopt Canada’s 2019 Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders. Among the signatories are MiningWatch Canada, Common Frontiers, and KAIROS Canada.

The letter to Ambassador Craig Kowalik was sent in response to the criminalization of Indigenous and environmental defenders from the Federation of Indigenous and Campesino Organizations of Azuay (FOA, Federación de Organizaciones lndigenas y Campesinas del Azuay). 

FOA members are facing criminal proceedings for their environmental defense work to safeguard the Kimsakocha páramo from the Loma Larga gold mining project, owned by Canadian mining company DPM Metals Inc.

The letter to the embassy expresses concern over criminal charges initiated by DPM Metals against six FOA members — Lauro Sigcha, Lizardo Zhaqui, Marco Tapia, Ruth Pugo, Carmita Pérez, and Yaku Pérez — following a peaceful clean-up action to remove mining waste left by the company near the headwaters of the Irquis and Tarqui rivers in the Kimsakocha páramo. The Kimsakocha páramo is a fragile ecosystem that regulates the regional hydrological cycle and provides fresh water to tens of thousands of people. For more than 30 years, Indigenous and peasant communities have defended this ecosystem against large-scale mining projects.

Ecuador bans opposition party

Acting on the request of the government-aligned Prosecutor General, an electoral judge in Ecuador on Friday (March 6) ordered the nine-month suspension of the country’s largest opposition party, the Citizens’ Revolution (RC ). 

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) denounced the ban as the latest escalation in a broader pattern of authoritarian regression, including lawfare against opponents, repeated states of emergency, and deepening military ties with the Trump administration.

“The government of President Daniel Noboa, who is strongly backed by President Trump, is trying to accelerate the destruction of what is left of democracy in Ecuador,” said CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot. The move bars RC –led by former President Rafael Correa – from local elections to be held in 2027.

U.S.-Ecuador military strikes

On the same day as the ban on the RC party, the Ecuadorian and U.S. militaries conducted joint airstrikes near the Colombian border targeting a site allegedly tied to dissidents from the former FARC guerrillas from Colombia. 

These “lethal kinetic operations,” as the U.S. military calls them, are another of Noboa’s efforts since his 2023 election to deepen ties with Washington — including a failed attempt to re-establish a U.S. military base in the country.

Days earlier, on Tuesday (March 3), the United States and Ecuador launched joint attacks against “designated terrorist organizations” – Trumpspeak for drug-traffickers.

Since September last year, the United States has attacked small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, but these attacks in Ecuador are the first known land operations by U.S. forces against drug cartels. At least 150 people have been killed in 44 known strikes. The United States has never shown proof that any of the dead were in fact moving illegal drugs.

While neither government will say precisely where the attacks are happening, Noboa ordered curfews in four provinces west and southwest of Quito, extending to the city of Guayaquil and beyond. Noboa said his country was “entering a new phase in the internal war.”

As Haiti’s transitional government comes to an end, the U.S. flexes its muscles

by Jim Hodgson

In April 2024, I welcomed the formation of Haiti’s transitional council (known as the CPT). It was the product of negotiations among a broad spectrum of Haitian political parties and civil society organizations, including the business sector.

Within a month, fractures that would block steps toward a new election became apparent. And efforts to create conditions for an election were undermined by a rapid and ongoing increase in neighbourhood-based gang violence – despite the presence of UN-backed soldiers and police.

The mandate of the CPT expired on Saturday, Feb. 7, which also happened to be the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship. 

The transition ceremony Feb. 7: Haitians are “anti-constitutionally governed” (AlterPresse)

A U.S. warship and two Coast Guard ships sit in the Port-au-Prince harbour and a military plane was on the ground at the international airport. As many as 1.4 million people are displaced by gang violence. The political in-fighting rages.

In moments like this, I try to look at a variety of media sources to understand what is going on. The one I trust most is AlterPresse, a civil society initiative that emerges from among the groups that have worked for decades for a better future for people afflicted by poverty and violence. Haitian elites and their neoliberal allies abroad, meanwhile, seem determined again to impose a new totalitarian state, which is a predator state (like that of Duvalier) safe only for the rich and their cronies.

In the absence of any elections, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé (a businessman named to the post by the CPT in November 2024) will hold on to power beyond the CPT’s expiry. He will rule like former de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry did from July 2021 through February 2024: a head-of-government without a head-of-state or Parliament. 

Accountability? Only to the foreign governments that have backed him: the United States, France and Canada.

Left: Statement by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand. Right: Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils Aimé and Canadian ambassador to Haiti André François Giroux (Le Nouvelliste).

In several recent public statements, U.S. authorities affirmed their support for Fils-Aimé. He is presented as the key figure capable of ensuring institutional continuity. They particularly emphasize his role in building a Haiti that is “strong, prosperous, and free.”

But it is those ships in the Port-au-Prince harbour that remind Haitians that pleasant statements barely mask the history of U.S. hard power in Haiti. 

AlterPresse: strong signals from the United States and uncertainty about the transition in Haiti.

“The naval presence appears to provide the latest proof of Washington’s willingness to use the threat of force to shape politics in the Western Hemisphere,” Diego Da Rin, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told AP News. Arrival of the ships comes during a months-long build-up of U.S. military force in the Caribbean – already used against Venezuela on Jan. 3. 

An essential historical overview

Gotson Pierre, editor at AlterPresse, wrote Feb. 5 (text is translated and lightly-edited for clarity and length):

For many observers, these developments cannot be understood without a historical overview of relations between Haiti and the United States. This history is marked by repeated interventions, both military and political.

From the occupation of 1915 to 1934, with its devastating human, economic, and institutional consequences, to the [interventions in 1994 and 2004], and including the massive deployment of troops in 2010 following the earthquake, the United States has played a central role in major Haitian crises. Added to this are non-military political interventions, notably during the 2010-2011 elections, and more recently, the case of former Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Many analysts also believe that regional bodies such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Organization of American States (OAS) operate within a framework heavily influenced by Washington. 

Haiti maintains a complex relationship with the United States, characterized by geographical proximity, strategic interdependence, and asymmetrical power dynamics. This proximity … continues to influence the country’s political trajectory.

On the eve of February 7, 2026, amid institutional uncertainties, increased international pressure, and a reinforced military presence, the equation remains unresolved. The coming days will reveal whether these signs signal a simple continuation within established frameworks or a new phase of political realignment under strong external influence.

No to mining, Yes to life

Family members of the ‘Santa Marta 5’ file legal complaint over delay in final ruling

by Jim Hodgson

After four postponements in delivering the final written ruling to confirm the acquittal of the defendants, family members of five anti-mining leaders in El Salvador have filed an official complaint against the judges who provided only a verbal not-guilty verdict after trial five months ago.

The defendants are people that I have known for nearly 25 years through their involvement in the Santa Marta Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES).

The text that follows is a based on a text published this week by the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), supplemented by other media reports.

The complaint against the judges was filed with the Judicial Investigation Directorate of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) Jan. 20, 2026, and adds to a series of public actions undertaken by the families, organizations, and human rights groups to demand the definitive closure of the judicial process against the water defenders. They had previously been part of a successful struggle to stop a gold mine from re-opening in the northern part of Cabañas department.

The Santa Marta 5 were arrested Jan. 11, 2023, and charged in connection with the alleged disappearance of a woman during El Salvador’s civil war. The charges were widely denounced as political persecution: the community leaders had been sounding the alarm over indications that the Nayib Bukele government was seeking to overturn El Salvador’s 2017 ban on metal mining, the first and only in the world. 

They were imprisoned for eight months while awaiting trial and subsequently placed under house arrest, a measure that was granted only after pressure from national and international human rights organizations and elected officials.

In December of 2025, El Salvador’s legislature, dominated by Bukele’s New Ideas party, did in fact overturn the law prohibiting mining in the country.

The defendants were acquitted of all charges in October 2024. The Attorney General appealed the decision, and in November 2024, the Cojutepeque Criminal Chamber overturned the dismissal of the charges and allowed a retrial in a new jurisdiction.

When the second trial concluded in September 2025, the San Vicente Sentencing Court reached the same conclusion in its oral ruling, acquitting the defendants of criminal charges. But the court has since delayed delivering its final written ruling four times, unjustifiably prolonging the judicial process and leaving the case without definitive closure.

On Jan. 9, the judges once again postponed the delivery of the written ruling until Jan. 30, a decision that the families believe could constitute a delay of justice in violation to the principle of “prompt and fair justice” and keeps a process indefinitely open that already has two acquittal rulings.

In the document they submitted to the CSJ, the families of the defendants requested an investigation into the delays as they have prevented the sentence from becoming final. Without a written ruling, the procedural deadlines for either a possible appeal or the definitive closure of the case cannot commence.

Media and social media coverage of the new legal complaint.

Milton Rivas, son of Pedro Antonio Rivas, one of the defendants, explained to the media that the judges “have been delaying the final ruling” and that the complaint filed seeks to demand justice for his family members. “We are not asking for anything, nor have we come to beg for anything; we have come to demand justice, because it is unacceptable that it takes them about five months to submit a document that they could have delivered the same day the hearing ended,” he declared.

Social movements, human rights groups, community representatives, and family members of the defendants denounced the court’s stall tactic during a press conference on Jan. 13. Rivas, joined by community leader Alfredo Leiva, stated that the failure to deliver the written ruling has both prolonged the legal uncertainty and kept the defendants, their families, and the community in a constant state of anxiety.  “This delay keeps our family members in a situation of constant anguish and constitutes a denial of justice,” they declared.

A representative of the University Movement for Critical Thought also warned of a broader context of increasing persecution and criminalization in the country. Currently, at least 38 human rights, environmental, labour, and political activists remain imprisoned, while human rights defenders and community journalists continue to report receiving threats, police harassment, and intimidation campaigns against them.

“We demand an immediate end to [this] persecution and respect for the right to defend the environment, to inform, and to organize,” the organizations stated, issuing an urgent call to Salvadoran society and the international community to remain vigilant given the risk of additional arbitrary arrests targeting critical voices and community organizing efforts.

Finally, they reported that a permanent vigil is being held in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador every day at six in the evening as a peaceful act of protest and a demand for justice, freedom, and respect for human rights.