Washington DC
In Honduras, yesterday, peaceful marches by the pro-democracy, anti-coup regime Resistance Movement in support of protesting teachers were violently repressed in many parts of Honduras. Many people were detained, beaten and tear-gassed.
Ilse Velasquez, a 59-year old teacher, was hit and killed by a police tear-gas canister, March 18, 2011, during a peaceful protest in Tegucigalpa. Photo provided by: FNRP-Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular
Internationally-funded Guatemalan bio-fuel interests evict Mayan Qeqchi families from their historic lands, destroying homes and crops, killing one, injuring more, thousands are without food or shelter
RA thanks and honors the amazing Honduran pro-democracy movement, for the return of President Mel Zelaya, ousted by a US and Canadian backed military coup in June 2009
Dozens of people beaten, gassed, illegally detained. This follows on 5 days of brutal repression against Honduran teachers and the Pro-Democracy movement, including the killing of 59 year-old teacher Ilse Velasquez
An article about on-going clashes and killings in Honduras' endless situation of poverty and exploitation, of the wealthy sectors illegally forcing the poor from their lands, and of State and private sector paramilitary repression and impunity.
A group of Guatemalan women is seeking millions from a Canadian mining company after claiming they were assaulted and gang-raped by security and police forces near the company's operations in the Central American country.
Almost 30 years after the massacres and genocide carried out by the U.S.-backed military regime of Guatemala against its own majority indigenous population (part of the "war on communism"), 11 years after the genocide cases were first filed in Guatemala courts, a former army general has been arrested for his role in genocide, forced disappearances and other crimes against humanity.
Rights Action laments profoundly the murder of Facundo Cabral in Guatemala today. We light a candle for this Argentinean poet and musician and for his family and friends.
Not surprisingly, Goldcorp Inc. did not agree, at its annual general meeting in Vancouver (May 18, 2011), to a shareholder's resolution to suspend its "Marlin" mine in Guatemala, as ordered by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), an institution of the Organization of American States (OAS).
