Canada
Rights Action is honored to fund and work with many courageous people and organizations in Honduras and Guatemala, while focusing critical attention on how we, in the U.S. and Canada, are often part of the problem.
The Guatemalan government, headed by President and former General Otto Perez Molina, sent the military to ‘protect’ the “El Escobal” mine owned by Tahoe Resources (Canadian/ American company) and 40% owned by the Canadian mining giant Goldcorp Inc.
From February to April 2013, the Sub-Committee on International Human Rights of the Canadian House of Commons heard from various witnesses regarding the human rights situation in Honduras. The hearings were scheduled as a result of the severely deteriorated human rights situation in the country but also in anticipation of future hearings related to the Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
Starting last night (May 22), the Honduran military headed by Operation Xatruch Commander, Coronel German Alfaro and private security guards contracted by Dinant Corporation (controlled by Honduran oligarch Miguel Facusse) have been inside the Paso Aguan finca firing automatic weapons in what appears to be attempts to intimidate and scare the community of ‘La Panama’ that lives inside and adjacent to the finca.
(Article by Grahame Russell) The Struggle For Justice For Genocide Continues in Guatemala - And A Story About The Relentless, Collective Work Of Ants
- Urgent Action: Illegal arrest of Priest and 22 members of Honduran National Resistance Front
- Article: THE AGUA ZARCA DAM: How the World Bank and Central American Bank for Economic Integration are Profiting from the Looting of Indigenous Lenca Territory
Alberto Rotondo, executive of Tahoe Mine, San Rafael in Guatemala , gave direct orders to assassinate members of the community San Rafael Las Flores. The investigation of the mining conflicts in San Rafael Las Flores, Santa Rosa , took a 180 degrees turn, after the Public Ministry submitted audio from wiretapping as evidence. In the audio it can be clearly heard how Alberto Rotondo, head of the San Rafael Mining Security outfit, ordered to assassinate opponents of the mine.
Article “THE GUATEMALA ‘IXIL GENOCIDE TRIAL’: The Case Against Efraín Rios Montt Tests The Independence Of The Judiciary And Pushes Guatemala’s Military Political Project To The Limit”, by Annie Bird
Jose Antonio Lopez Lara of Rigores was identified as the body found in the exhumation of a clandestine burial site in the Paso Aguan plantation today. The exhumation was performed by two Guatemalan forensic anthropologists [with the FAFG – Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation], and attended by Honduran judicial officials and representatives of COFADEH and campesinos from the area, as well as by local police and military officials.
National and international media gathered in the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) office for the announcement of the exhumation of human remains found in the Paso Aguán plantation, in the jurisdiction of Trujillo, Colón.
