News Update
"The most polished segment of the "Alliance for Prosperity" details the sweetheart deals that Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador will roll out for international investors. U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden compared the Alliance to a kind of Plan Colombia for Central America. Plan Colombia was a six-year, $9 billion experiment that used anti-drugs policy as a pretext for bettering international investment conditions in Colombia, both through militarization and political reforms." Article by By Dawn Paley.
From January 28 - February 8, 2015, Rights Action travelled with a Canadian journalist and students from the University of Guelph (Canada), to meet with Mayan and campesino communities suffering environmental and health harms, repression and other human rights violations caused by the Canadian-led mining industry in Guatemala. Rights Action provides grassroots funding to the community and environmental protection and human rights promotion work of the people we met with.
From January 28 - February 8, 2015, Rights Action travelled with a Canadian journalist and students from the University of Guelph (Canada), to meet with Mayan and campesino communities suffering environmental and health harms, repression and other human rights violations caused by the Canadian-led mining industry in Guatemala.
“La hambruna se extiende por Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y El Salvador” informa el Programa Mundial de Alimentos de las Naciones Unidas, buscando sensibilizar a las personas y abriendo cuentas bancarias para recibir donaciones caritativas, muchas de las cuales provendrán de los países y de los consumidores que ayudan a crear la hambruna y beneficiarse de ella.
"New famine", cries out the Guatemalan newspaper headline (La Prensa, February 7, 2015), threatening the lives of 874,000 people in 206 regions of the country.
Just in time for an election campaign in which Stephen Harper is positioning himself as a war-time prime minister, Bill C-51 (Anti-Terrorism Act 2015) was recently introduced to play a dual role: granting extraordinary new powers to already hyperactive and unaccountable state security agencies, and baiting as "soft on terror" anyone who questions the bill's necessity and the human rights violations it will further legitimize.
Four months after 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School were forcefully disappeared by Mexican authorities and organized crime drug gangs, the Mexican authorities are hoping to close the case. The Mexican federal prosecutor said that the version of the events in which the students were killed, incinerated in a dump, and their remains disposed of in a river is a "historical truth."
Action Report
Inside you will find links to articles and reports, TV reports and doc-films addressing the work and struggles that Rights Action is funding and/or involved in.
Urgent Action
Sign-On Letter concerning about assassination ff Juan Francisco Martinez, Lenca Indigenous Community & Environmental Defender in Honduras.
Video
"No More Evictions" addresses the historic and on-going struggle of indigenous Mayan Q'eqchi' communities against the threats of:
- global agribusiness (sugar cane and African palm production)
- global nickel mining industry (owned, until late 2011, by the Canadian companies INCO, Skye Resources and Hudbay Minerals)
Documents
Over 185 days have passed in which the Lenca indigenous communities of the Rio Blanco region of Intibuca, Honduras have blocked an access road built into the intended construction site for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. Desarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA), plans to build the dam, and is pushing the project through with violence and intimidation, while attempting to criminalize land rights defenders with baseless charges.