Tag Archives: #HumanRights

Haitian claim for slavery reparations at the heart of a UN forum

by Jim Hodgson

A United Nations forum on the historic wrongs committed against people of African descent is building momentum in favour of an international tribunal on atrocities dating back to the transatlantic trade of enslaved people.

When the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) held its third session in less than two years in Geneva in mid-April, African and Caribbean governments together with civil society organizations pressed forward with plans to create a tribunal that would be similar to that which oversaw the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II.

Proponents say such a tribunal would help establish legal norms for international and historical reparations claims.

Supporters include many members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), made up of 15 member states, and the African Union (AU), which includes 55 states—and Antonio Guterres, the UN General Secretary. “We call for reparatory justice frameworks, to help overcome generations of exclusion and discrimination,” he said March 25.

Supporters argue that Western countries and institutions that continue to benefit from the wealth slavery generated should be held accountable, particularly given ongoing legacies of racial discrimination. Opponents say that contemporary states and institutions should not be held responsible for historical slavery.

The World Council of Churches was among faith-based and civil society organizations that came together at the PFPAD forum to examine what states and other actors may do to redress the historic exploitation and harms that Africans and people of African descent have suffered. (You can learn more here about global ecumenical efforts to overcome racism, discrimination and xenophobia.)

Righting the wrongs in Haiti

Given that Haiti’s claim for reparations is among the strongest, the voices of Haitian civil society groups and their diaspora counterparts were heard at the PFPAD forum. 

Those groups used the forum to put a spotlight on the crucial role that Haiti played in the struggle to end slavery. “To recognize the historic context is essential to understand the unique position of Haiti in the global struggle for justice and egality,” they said in a statement before the forum. Participating groups—including the Montana Accord network and of the Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy (HAFFD)—said they strongly approve calls for reparations to Haiti.

Le Marron Inconnu, and in the background, the National Palace before the 2010 earthquake.

Haiti was born as an independent nation in 1804 after the enslaved people revolted against their French colonial masters. The values of “liberté, égalité et fraternité,” expressed in the triumph of the French Revolution in 1789, resonated among slaves in Saint-Domingue, France’s richest colony. In 1804, the world’s first successful slave rebellion resulted in the birth of the Republic of Haiti. 

Beginning in 1825, France squeezed an “independence debt” from Haiti that adds up to at least $21 billion in today’s dollars. That estimate comes from The New York Times, but backers of the reparations claim say the amount is much higher.

“It’s $21 billion plus 200 years of interest that France has enjoyed so we’re talking more like $150 billion, $200 billion or more,” Jemima Pierre, professor of Global Race at the University of British Columbia, told Reuters.

Despite the obvious injustice of that debt, France continues to resist pressure to join in reparations. In August 2010, about 100 prominent academics, authors, and human rights activists signed on to an open letter to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, arguing that the case for repayment was “morally, economically, and legally unassailable.” France dismissed the petition, pointing to its record of delivering other aid to Haiti and not addressing the legitimacy of the debt.

“What’s important is that it’s time that France recognises this and we move forward,” Haitian civil society activist Monique Clesca told Reuters. France, whose development agency has given hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Haiti, has previously referred to a “moral debt” owed to Haiti.

Trans women in Mexico say: “They’re killing us”

by Jim Hodgson

In Mexico, the new year began with a series of highly-publicized murders and beatings of Trans women. The violence, sadly, is not rare: Mexico follows only Brazil with the highest numbers of murders of LGBTQIA+ people each year. The fact that they’re being talked about at all is what’s unusual.

Two of the women who were killed were active in party politics. A woman beaten by her fiancé is a well-known social media “influencer,” Paola Suárez. The incidents are reminders of the breach between much-improved legal protection for LGBTQIA+ people in most of Latin America, and the harsh realities of day-to-day life where many men still hold to old ways. More on that below.

The assassination of Samantha Gómez Fonseca came the day before a planned march by Trans women in Mexico City.

Samantha Gómez Fonseca, 37, had launched a campaign for a seat in the national Senate as a member of the ruling MORENA (Movement for National Regeneration) party. She was shot and killed on Jan. 14 in the street after a prison visit in the Xochimilco area in the south end of Mexico City. 

Miriam Noemí Ríos, part of the Citizens’ Movement party (MC) in Michoacan state, was shot and killed Jan. 11 in Zamora, Michoacan. She was a candidate for the municipal council in nearby Jacona. 

Miriam Ríos (left) is remembered in Michoacán state. In Hidalgo, Gaby is remembered as the first Trans woman to come out in Ixmilquilpan more than 20 years ago.

“What is going on in Mexico?” demanded Salma Luévano Luna, a Trans woman who is a member of the national Chamber of Deputies for the MORENA. 

“Why do we have four violent deaths of Trans women already this year? They’re killing us.

“This is what I am talking about when I say that hate speech is the entry point for hate crimes. For this, I demand justice for Samantha and all of my sisters. Enough. Not one more.” 

Luévano had been in the news just days early after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had referred to her as “a man in a dress.” He apologized a day later, and she accepted the apology, but the incident still rankles among Trans activists. 

The words of the prophets are written on the walls of the National Palace: “Trans Lives Matter.” The graffiti was created during the Jan. 15 Trans mobilization.

Others killed in the first two weeks of the year included Gaby Ortiz, whose body was found beside a rural highway near Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo. In Coatzalcoalcos, Veracruz, the bodies of Vanessa, a Trans woman and her partner (whose name is not given) were found in their home. The Arcoiris organization points to two more: a Trans woman whose name is not known found shot in the back and dead Jan. 13 in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, and a person identified as 35-year-old Fabián Kenneth Trejo, who died Jan. 14 in the Álvaro Obregón area of Mexico City. 

“All of the victims, known and unknown, deserve justice,” said the Human Rights Commission of Mexico City in a statement Jan. 15. The commission called on authorities to investigate in ways that take seriously their gender identity and political activities “so that truth be known, leading to sanctions that are necessary for the transformation of the structural conditions that will allow LGBTTTIQA+ populations to live free from violence.”

From 2007 through 2022, a total of 590 Trans people were murdered in Mexico. That’s an average of 53 each year. 

Unfortunately, few violent crimes in Mexico result in criminal charges, especially if the victim is from a marginalised group. In July last year, Ulises Nava, the head of a sexual diversity unit at the University of Guerrero in Chilpancingo was shot and killed while attending a LGBTQIA+ conference in Aguascalientes. In November, Mexico’s first openly non-binary magistrate and prominent activist Ociel Baena was killed; the body of their partner, Dorian Herrera, was found at their side. Police have treated the crime as one of passion. But activists, including Salma Luévano, the member of the Chamber of Deputies cited above, are sceptical. 

“To be Trans is to transgress the social order,” say the authors of fascinating essay, International Borders and Gender Borders, about the experiences of Central American Trans people among the migrants who are passing northward through Mexico. Trans people, they write, “challenge the heteronormativity of social and religious ways of thinking and being,” with all of their patriarchal norms and values. That system imposes a “binary, heteronormative” set of rules that try to restrict “each person within parameters that dictate gender roles, sexual orientation, and the spaces and tasks that are designated for each biological sex.”

That essay brought to mind two writers whose work is available in English. Neither is Trans, but both helped to shape my own thinking about gender, borders and identities.

Borderlands (above); a portrait of Marcella Althaus-Reid by Scottish artist David Martin hangs in a classroom at New College School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh.

When I was living in Cuernavaca in the late 1990s, friends recommended the work of the Chicana lesbian writer Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942-2004), particularly Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Born in Texas, she lived her life across the U.S. southwest. Some of her gems, retrieved from the internet (as my copy of the book is in Canada and I am in Mexico):

“Culture is made by those in power- men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them.”

And:

“This land was Mexican once,

was Indian always, 

and is. 

And will be again.”

I would also suggest reading work by or about Marcella Althaus-Reid (1952-2009), who challenged the foundations of patriarchal Christian theology with her “indecent theology.” A hint: “All theology is sexual theology.” Here’s a good introduction from Kittredge Cherry. 

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.