Coordinator
· (June 12, 2013) New York Post article: “State Department Stymied Probe Into Shooting Of Four Hondurans, Whistleblower Says”
· (August 2012) Rights Action / CEPR Report: “Collateral Damage Of A Drug War: The May 11 Killings In Ahuas And The Impact Of The U.S. War On Drugs In La Moskitia, Honduras”
A summary of many of the organizations and individuals, projects and struggles Rights Action has supported this year with your funds. Please read this in conjunction with Spring 2013 Fund-raising Newsletter “Hard Times in Guatemala & Honduras ”.
While Guatemala attempts to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to justice in a landmark genocide trial, deadly violence elsewhere in the country continues unpunished. In less than one month, five activists and human right defenders struggling against mining companies and fighting for land and labor rights have been murdered in rural areas.
- Article by Jennifer Moore: CANADA'S PROMOTION OF MINING INDUSTRY [IN HONDURAS] BELIES CLAIMS OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
- Commentary by Grahame Russell: "HONDURAS: A VIOLENCE, REPRESSION AND IMPUNITY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD"
Along the Chixoy river, where the dam was built, some 32 remote, poor Mayan villages were devastated by this project (1975-1985). Most harmed villages were in the flood basin up river from the 125 meter high dam wall. Many were illegally forced to leave; others lost much of their lands and/or were cut off from and isolated by the existence of the flood basin.
From 1975-1985, the World Bank (WB) and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) spear-headed this “development” project, investing 100s of millions of dollars into the Guatemalan military regimes of those years. The 1982 Rio Negro massacres (February 12, March 13, May 14, September 18) were planned and carried out by the military regime, forcing local “civil defense patrols” to do most of the brutal killing, so as to forcibly (and obviously illegally) evict the Rio Negro villagers, and some 25 other remote villages up-river from where the Chixoy Dam wall was built.
Letter to the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, responding to a denigrating letter from the World Bank and no response from the Inter-American Development Bank to the on-going demands for justice and reparations
List: "ASSASSINATIONS IN HONDURAS UNDER MILITARY-BACKED REGIME HEADED BY "PEPE" LOBO" and Article: "HONDURAS: AMERICA'S GREAT FOREIGN POLICY DISGRACE"
Representatives of campesino and human rights groups in the Aguán will be speaking in front of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Petitioners and experts on the region will also be speaking the following evening at an event co-hosted by the CEPR and Rights Action.
Rights Action forwards this from NISGUA, seeking Human Rights Accompaniers in Guatemala. If interested, contact NISGUA directly.
