Guatemala
When security forces of a Canadian mining company brutally evicted Mayan families from their villages in Guatemala, eleven women were raped, a community leader was killed, and a young man paralyzed. Now villagers are standing up and suing HudBay Minerals, but they need our help to match the legal firepower of this huge corporation -- donate now and help end the mining murders for good.
A communiqué from FAMDEGUA (Family Members of the Disappeared in Guatemala), the FAFG (Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala) and CALDH (Center for Human Rights and Legal Action), concerning the exhumation of a mass grave in Guatemala. Also, an article about more delays in the genocide legal trial against former General Efrain Rios Montt, a trial that began in 2000, for atrocities committed in 1981-1982!
CHIXOY DAM REPARATIONS CAMPAIGN: 30th Anniversary of the March 13, 1982 Rio Negro Massacre, & Still the WB (World Bank) and IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) Have Not Paid Reparations and Compensation
Rights Action seeks financial support for 13 Mayan villagers, to help them fight a precedent-setting corporate accountability lawsuit against Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals, over truly horrific acts of gang-rape, murder and shootings committed by mine security personnel at a Canadian mine in Guatemala.
As a Mexico Style "Drug War" is launched in Central America, US and US Allied Security Forces are increasing participating in police actions in Central America. On February 7, Oliver Garza, a high level State Department Security Advisor took up residence in the US embassy in Honduras. Garza comes to Honduras from the State Department agency most directly in charge of US security operations in Colombia and Mexico, and in 2002 his name was associated with a scandal in which 3,000 AK-47's were shipped from the Nicaraguan National Police to Colombian AUC paramilitaries.
February 14 will mark four years since indigenous q'eqchi' leader Ramiro Choc was kidnapped and illegally detained by the Guatemalan government. He was not arrested, but pulled off a bus by soldiers who said they would kill him. When news of his illegal detention became public, he was kept alive and held for several days in a secret location.
Business Week article, about suspension of Hudbay Minerals mining operations in Peru
A letter sent to the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights), along with a Petition concerning the illegal forced evictions, massacres and other human rights violations of 32 Mayan communities (over 3000 people) caused by the Chixoy Hydro-electric Dam, a "development" project of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank in partnership with successive military regimes (1975-1985)
Elliot Abrams, a former high level State Department official during the 1980s, testified last week that the Reagan administration knew that Argentina's military junta was systematically stealing babies from murdered and jailed democracy activists and giving them to right-wing families friendly to the regime. An article by Cyril Mychalejko.
