Truth, Memory & Justice
Rights Action supports the work and struggle of community organizations in defense of human rights, for justice and for an end to impunity, related to the U.S.-backed government repression of the past (including the genocides in Guatemala), and related on-going land, human rights and environmental defense struggles.
Chixoy Dam Reparations Campaign
From 1995 to mid-2000s, Rights Action supported this courageous effort by impoverished Mayan Achi people to tell the truth about and seek justice for massacres, killings and rapes, and illegal forced evictions suffered at the hands of the U.S.-backed regimes of generals Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt, violence that was carried out to help advance the Chixoy hydro-electric dam project of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
The two “development” banks invested 100s of millions of dollars in partnership with the Guatemalan military regime, to build the Chixoy dam. Over 440 Rio Negro villagers were killed and their ancestral home village destroyed, as part of the forced relocation of close to 30 villages, to make way for the filling of the dam’s flood basin. After years of courageous struggle, a measure of reparations was paid to survivor families by the Guatemala government, starting in 2014. Not a penny was paid by the World Bank or Inter-American Development Bank, that both profitted from their investments in this project.
OFRANEH
OFRANEH (Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) spearheads courageous land, rights and environmental defense struggles along the Caribbean coast against wealthy and powerful interests (national and international) involved in tourism and African palm production, that benefit from the corruption of Honduran political and legal institutions, and the violence of police, military and private security guards. Miriam Miranda, OFRANEH’s coordinator, has been recognized as one of the leading national voices not only for her defense of Indigenous Garifuna lands and rights but also for opposing the 2009 U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup and the corrupted, military-backed governments in power since then.
March in Honduras, sign reads “March of the drums. 214 years of ancestral Garifuna resistance”
COPINH
Co-founded by Berta Caceres in 1992, COPINH (Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indigenas de Honduras) is a leading grass-roots organization in western Honduras, struggling in defense of land, human rights and the environment, and for a fair and just “development” model.
Since the 2009 U.S. and Canadian-back coup, corrupt, military-backed regimes have killed well over 500 community defenders for political reasons.
COPINH marching with sign that reads “here no one gives up”
No justice has been done for any of these cases. The well-funded and planned assassination of Berta Caceres (March 2, 2016), sent a further message and threat to all Hondurans.
COPINH (now headed by Berta Caceres’ daughters) continues with work and struggle, in the corrupted, manipulated Honduras legal system, to seek justice not only for the “material authors” of Berta’s assassination, but more importantly for the “intellectual authors” – those people who decided that Berta was to be killed, and then paid for the team of killers.
Political Prisoner Support
Since the fraudulently and violently stolen elections of November 2017 – the 3rd set of “elections” deemed “democratic” by the U.S. and Canada since the 2009 military coup - repression spiked again in Honduras, including a wave of jailings of political prisoners on trumped up charges, using the legal and penitentiary systems as tools of repression.
One well known case was that of Edwin Espinal, partner of a long-time Canadian human rights activist Karen Spring, who has lived and worked in Honduras since the the military coup in 2009.
March in Honduras, sign reads “Freedom for political prisoners in Honduras”
From 2008-2014, Karen worked with Rights Action; since 2014, Karen directs the work of the Honduras Solidary Network.
Rights Action supports courageous work in Honduras and Guatemala, advocating for the immediate release of all political prisoners and dropping of all trumped up charges against “criminalized” land/ human rights/ environmental defenders.
For more information on work and projects related to truth, memory and justice, please contact us.
