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PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENTS, FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO GUATEMALA & HONDURAS
North American media has widely covered the pro-democracy movements in many Middle East countries, even as our media has provided terrible coverage of Honduras' pro-democracy, anti-military coup regime since June 28, 2009.
Even as thousands have been killed in the Middle East, people are taking to the streets and demanding an end to exploitative, repressive, undemocratic regimes.
Across the planet, people are sick and tired of oligarchic, repressive regimes and lousy governments that use repression to serve the interests of the wealthy sectors.
RIGHTS ACTION's WORK IN GUATEMALA & HONDURAS
These are the very struggles we support in Guatemala and Honduras. Noting obvious differences between Latin America and the Middle East, the underlying demands and struggles of the people of Guatemala and Honduras are similar to those of the people's movements in the Middle East - to put an end to oligarchic, repressive regimes and lousy governments that use repression to serve the interests of the wealthy sectors, and to establish real democracies, based on the rule of law and ethics of justice, equality and respect for the environment.
Thank-you for your financial donations to Rights Action and for your trust in our work.
Please send us your questions and comments about the work and struggles set out in this Newsletter and found at www.rightsaction.org.
Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org), co-director
Annie Bird (annie@rightsaction.org), co-director
Karen Spring (spring.kj@gmail.com), in Honduras
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GUATEMALA
CHOC v. HUDBAY Wrongful Death Case in Canada
On December 2, Rights Action announced an important lawsuit. Represented by the Toronto law firm Klippensteins, Angelica Choc, a Mayan-Qeqchi (kek-chi) woman (photo), is suing HudBay Minerals, a Canadian mining company, for the killing of her husband, Adolfo Ich, in El Estor, Guatemala.
WIDOW FILES $12M SUIT AGAINST MINING COMPANY
From the CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/12/02/mining-lawsuit002.html): A Guatemalan woman has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Canadian mining giant HudBay Minerals, claiming it is responsible for the death of her husband. ... On Sept. 30, 2009, Ich was hacked and shot to death - allegedly by a private security guard employed by Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel, a subsidiary of Manitoba's HudBay Minerals - in front of witnesses following a protest in El Estor. Grahame Russell worked with Adolfo Ich through his non-governmental organization: Rights Action. Ich and other Mayan leaders protested against the mining company for its forced evictions of families and for unresolved land claims. "This was a targeted killing of a well-known community leader," Russell said. No one has been arrested for the killing.
(Since 2004, Rights Action has been funding and supporting the community development, and environmental and human rights defense work of Mayan Qeqchi communities being harmed by a string of nickel mining companies, from INCO in the 1970s-80s, through Skye Resources, now HudBay Minerals. We are supporting the family of Angelica Choc as they pursue truth and justice in this case.)
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HONDURAS
KIDNAPPING, TORTURE & ESCAPE OF JUAN CHINCHILLA
In January, Juan Chinchilla, a journalist and member of MUCA (Unified Campesino Movement of Aguan), was kidnapped, tortured and then able to escape; he is now in hiding.
(Photo: by MUCA of Juan Chinchilla)
From an article by Jeremy Kryt, February 18, 2011 (www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6946/):
As he rode his motorcycle home through the Aguán Valley of Honduras, on January 8, 2011, Juan Chinchilla noticed he was being followed. ... Chinchilla, a 25-year-old organizer for the Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán (MUCA), used his cell phone to call local MUCA members for help. But when his friends arrived on the scene a few minutes later, they found only his bullet-ridden motorcycle overturned in the weeds. That night, Chinchilla was taken to a remote storage shed by hooded and armed men, some of whom wore the uniforms of Grupo Dinant, one of the largest agro-businesses in the country. After a day of being tortured and questioned about campesino groups and their leaders, a disfigured and traumatized Chinchilla escaped while being moved to another site by throwing himself down a hillside in the dark.
"The oligarchs hope to terrorize [the campesinos] and drive them from the land," says Chinchilla, who spoke to In These Times by cell phone from an undisclosed location in Honduras. "But we will fight for our land [and] our rights, without arms, and in peace."
Tocoa, Colon is still heavily militarized since well before the November 15, 2010 massacre of 5 campesinos. Campesinos continue being threatened by police and military in conjunction with private security forces paid by large land owners.
(Since the June 2009 military coup, State repression has increased considerably in Honduras. Working in Honduras since 1998, since the military coup, Rights Action has been funding and supporting MUCA and other organizations involved in the Honduran peoples' Pro-Democracy Movement, that - despite widespread repression - aims to restore democracy and the rule of law, and to re-found the Honduran State and society.)
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GUATEMALA
THE COSTS OF GOLD & IMPUNITY: The Shooting, Survival, Resistance & Dignity of Dona Maria
"I bought this plot of land to live on, not to sell it." This, Diodora Hernandez (known as Dona Maria) explains, is why two local men tried to assassinate her last year - because she would not sell her plot of land to Canadian mining giant Goldcorp Inc.
(Dona Maria with Javier de Leon, of ADISMI (Association for the Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacan). Photo: Grahame Russell, February 1, 2011)
In February, Grahame Russell visited the home of Dona Maria for the first time since she was shot point blank in the head. On July 7, 2010, two men approached Dona Maria's home in the evening to ask for a cup of coffee. As Dona Maria came out of her small home, carrying the cups of coffee, walking behind her daughter Maria, one of the men came out from behind some bushes, leaned around her daughter, and shot her point blank in the head. The bullet entered her right eye, and exited by her right ear. But for a few millimeters, she would have died. After emergency operations and a long recovery in a hospital in Guatemala City, Dona Maria survived, miraculously, with a prosthetic eye. Seven months later, she still does not want to sell her land to Goldcorp Inc.
The two men suspected of the killing - local Mayan Mam men who are current and/or former Goldcorp Inc. mineworkers - were released after being questioned and no charges have been filed. The Attorney General's office (ministerio publico) has not spoken with Dona Maria; neither have they spoken with Goldcorp about the two suspects, though Goldcorp would have information about its former and/or on-going employees.
Amongst the many environmental and health harms and other human rights violations caused directly or indirectly by Goldcorp's open-pit, cyanide-leaching mine operating in Guatemala, the sowing of community divisions, hatred and violence is as devastating a result of the imposition of mining as anything else.
(Since 2004, Rights Action funds and supports the community development, and environmental and human rights defense work of Mayan Mam communities harmed by Goldcorp Inc's cyanide-leaching, open-pit gold mine.)
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HONDURAS
SUBMISSION to: Canadian Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs & International Development
Building on work Rights Action has done in Honduras since Hurricane Mitch devastated the country in 1998, killing some 30,000 poor Hondurans, we have doubled our work since the June 28, 2009 military coup. While Honduras has long been a country with high levels of exploitation and poverty and generalized violence, it has not experienced these levels of State-sponsored repression in recent years.
Repression is being used to quell the courageous pro-democracy movement and is covered up by widespread impunity and corruption in the administration of law and justice. The institutions of the State are not functioning in a democratic manner, but rather in service to the interests of the post-coup regime.
In this context, Rights Action is very concerned about a number of issues related to Canada's role in Honduras. Attached are articles and reports from our listserv:
1- "GOOD INVESTMENT" OPPORTUNITY" - looks at Canadian government policies of promoting Canadian economic and investment interests in the name of "development" (principally, but not only in the areas of mining, sweat shops and tourism), while ignoring the undemocratic nature of the regime, the corrupted and dysfunctional rule of law, and systematic repression.
2- "TRUTH [WHITE-WASH] COMMISSION IN HONDURAS" - sets out concerns about Canada's support for the so-called "Truth Commission", said Commission being rejected by a majority of Honduras as having any legitimacy.
3- "SWEATSHOPS, MINING, TOURISM & FREE TRADE NEGOTIATIONS" - provides an overview of economic and investment opportunities Canada is pursuing in Honduras, in the name of "development" - that is not the "development" that the poor majority of Hondurans need.
4- "CANADIAN PORN KINGS, TOURISM 'DEVELOPMENT' PROJECTS, REPRESSION & THE VIOLATION OF INDIGENOUS-GARIFUNA RIGHTS IN HONDURAS" - explains how Canadian businesses operating on Honduras' north coast are entering into direct conflict with local campesino and indigenous-Garifuna communities that have lived on the coastal lands for the past 200 years.
Rights Action's main point, that we urge Canadian politicians and officials to debate, is how Canada is pursuing our own economic and investment interests in Honduras in a way as to legitimize an illegitimate regime that is carrying out repression against its own population, undermining the very possibility of establishing a functioning administration of justice based on the rule of law and the possibility of re-establishing electoral democracy and the institutions of democratic countries.
(Rights Action funds and supports organizations in the Honduran peoples' pro-democracy movement that - despite on-going repression - aims to restore democracy and the rule of law, and to re-found the Honduran State and society. Full Submission available on request.)
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GUATEMALA
29 YEARS LATER - STILL SEEKING JUSTICE
... FOR THE RIO NEGRO MASSACRES
On November 30, 2010, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights advised ADIVIMA (Association for the Integral Development of Maya-Achi Victims) that the Rio Negro massacres case (petition #12,649) had been sent to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This represents another step in a 29-year process of seeking justice for the Rio Negro massacres in 1982 of some 444 women and children in the remote Maya-Achi village of Rio Negro. These massacres occurred to make way for the Chixoy Hydro-electric dam project of the World Bank (WB) and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The process before the Court could take a few more years, unless the government of Guatemala admits its responsibility and allows the Court to determine, unobstructed, what compensation and reparations the government of Guatemala must make to the surviving victims.
... FOR THE CHIXOY HYDRO-ELECTRIC DAM FORCED EVICTIONS
In February, Rights Action wrote an open letter to President Robert Zoellick, of the WB, and President Luis Alberto Moreno, of the IDB (full letter available on request).
Summary: It is outrageous that the WB and the IDB have not done everything possible to ensure that full compensation and reparations are paid to the thousands of impoverished Mayan-Achi campesinos illegally and forcibly evicted from their villages along the Chixoy river, 30 years ago, to make way for the construction of the Chixoy hydro-electric dam, a project of the WB and the IDB. These forced evictions include the massacring of 444 Rio Negro villagers.
This was your project; this was your investment financing; your banks profited from these "investments". It is urgent that the IDB and WB do everything possible to make this right.
Along the Chixoy river in central Guatemala, 32 remote, poor Mayan villages were devastated by your project (1975-1983). Most harmed villages were in the "flood basin", upriver from the 125 meter high dam wall. Many were forced to leave; others lost much of their lands and/or were cut off from and isolated by the existence of the flood basin.
Seven villages are down river from the dam wall. As this "development" project completely diverted the river, drying up 40 kilometers of the Chixoy river, they have lived in dry conditions ever since. These 7 communities were not "forcibly evicted", their river and livelihood simply dried up.
(Taken from the dam wall, this photo shows how the dam completely blocked off the river, down river, destroying the environment and devastating 7 villages. Photo: Rights Action, 2011)
In varying degrees, the 32 communities lost: homes and personal property; land and territory; access to water and arable land; animals and trees - everything. Not one of the communities was ever properly or legally relocated to homes and lands of equal or better quality than what they were forced to leave. In every community, their lives today remain considerably worse, in every way, than they ever were before this project.
(Since 1995, Rights Action funds and supports community development, environmental and human rights projects in the Rabinal, Chixoy river region. Since 2004, we fund and support the Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign.)
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GUATEMALA
A MAYAN-QEQCHI COMMUNITY IS RE-FILLING THE EMPTY SPACES WITH COURAGE & DIGNITY, ... & FEAR OF MORE REPRESSION ON BEHALF OF A CANADIAN NICKEL COMPANY
In the remote Mayan Qeqchi (kek-chi) community of Lote 8, in the mountains on the north side of Lake Izabal, eastern Guatemala, we stand in thick brush, in the empty space where the home of Amelia Cac Tiul used to be.
(Photo: U.Guelph & U.Saskatchewan seminar-delegation led by Grahame Russell, January 26, 2011. Amelia Cac Tiul & Margarita Caal Caal, of Lote 8)
We have hiked here to listen as Amelia explained how her home was burned to the ground on January 9, 2007, along with every single home in the Lote 8 community - 100 homes in all. And she speaks of how she was gang raped on January 17, along with 10 other Lote 8 women, by security guards hired by HudBay Minerals (Canadian nickel company), and by Guatemalan police and soldiers.
With 30 students from the universities of Guelph and Saskatchewan (in Canada) who came to learn more about the human rights violations caused directly and indirectly by Canadian nickel mining companies - first INCO, in the 1970s and 80s, then Skye Resources and HudBay Minerals from 2004 forward.
RE-FILLING THE EMPTY SPACES
From the home of Amelia, we filed through the brush to four more clearings, where women and men had begun to clear away the brush, to re-occupy the empty spaces. In each clearing, we saw burnt and chain-sawed remains of the huts destroyed in 2007. In each clearing, women told us of their homes and property that had been burned or stolen, of their families and community that had been scattered, and of the rapes. One by one, the families told us they wanted to move back, come what may (venga lo que venga), to rebuild their homes and reclaim their lands.
COME WHAT MAY
Are you not afraid, we asked, that you may suffer further repression and evictions on behalf of the mining company? Yes, they answered. Why are you doing this? What options to we have? Where can we go? Most importantly, they repeated: this is our land. Our parents settled here over 50 years ago. We were born and raised here. It is our right to be here. The company, with its security guards, police and soldiers, committed crimes against us, thinking we would just go away. But where would we go? Where will our children live?
(Since 2004, Rights Action funds and supports the community development, and environmental and human rights defense work of Mayan Qeqchi communities forcibly evicted and harmed by a string of nickel mining companies, from INCO, through Skye Resources, now HudBay Minerals.)
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GUATEMALA
GOLDCORP MINEWORKERS ASSAULT & THREATEN PEACEFUL PROTESTERS
On February 28,, people (mainly Mayan-Mam men and women) from villages harmed and damaged since 2004 by Goldcorp's mine, gathered for a Permanent Assembly coordinated by ADISMI (the Association for the Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahucan) and FREDEMI (San Miguel Ixtahuacan Defense Front), to draw attention to the fact that the government of Guatemala and Goldcorp had not complied with a May 2010 order from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights to suspend Goldcorp's mining operation. Their peaceful protests were violently broken up by Goldcorp mineworkers and other unidentified people.
* A local community member and human rights defender, Miguel Bámaca, was seriously beaten
* Aniseto López (a member of ADISMI and FREDEMI) was illegally detained by Goldcorp mineworkers, threatened and beaten
* As a busload of protesters traveled along a public road, they were illegally detained and threatened by Goldcorp mineworkers
* Over a dozen protesters have been injured and one person hospitalized
* Phones, cameras and videos-cameras were stolen from people in the protests.
This is not a local, Guatemalan issue. This is an issue of the governments of Canada and Guatemala, of Goldcorp, of the major investors that have been informed, over and over, of the environmental and health harms and other human rights violations that have occurred and continue to occur regularly since 2004. The repression of February 28, 2011, is but the latest "incident".
(Since 2004, Rights Action funds and supports the community development, and environmental and human rights defense work of Mayan Mam communities harmed by Goldcorp Inc's cyanide-leaching, open-pit gold mine.)
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TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS
For the struggles and organizations above, and for indigenous and campesino communities working for community controlled development, environmental protection and human rights in Honduras and Guatemala, make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* UNITED STATES: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* CANADA: 552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
DONATIONS OF STOCK: info@rightsaction.org
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SPEAKERS: Contact us to plan educational presentations in your community, school, place of worship, home (info@rightsaction.org)
EDUCATIONAL DELEGATIONS TO CENTRAL AMERICA: Form your own group and/ or join one of our educational delegation-seminars to learn first hand about community development, human rights and environmental struggles (info@rightsaction.org)
* CREATE YOUR OWN email and mail lists and re-distribute our information
* RECOMMENDED DAILY NEWS: www.democracynow.org / www.upsidedownworld.org / www.dominionpaper.ca
* RECOMMENDED BOOKS: Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America"; Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"; James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me"; Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"; Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; Dr Seuss's "Horton Hears A Who"
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org), co-director
Annie Bird (annie@rightsaction.org), co-director
Karen Spring (spring.kj@gmail.com), in Honduras
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