Rights Action Covid19 update #5
The deaths and harms caused by Covid19 – a devastating threat to life and huge challenge to how humans co-exist – are multiplied and worsened by deeply entrenched systems of human inequality, discrimination and violence.
Parts of the problem:
· The unequal, unjust Nation State system, dominated economically, politically, militarily by rich, powerful nations;
· The G7, IMF, World Bank, WTO, and a host of global companies and investors dominating the global economic order.
· The dominant economic ideology and system based on ever more exploitation and production, more extraction, more Mother Earth degradation, more waste and contamination, more sales, more consumption, more profits, … .
Here: Another batch of arbitrarily selected stories
Below: How to donate to Rights Action’s Covid19 Response Fund
"Do with it what you will. Cry over it. Get angry. Forget it.
But don't say in years to come that you would have lived your life differently
if only you had heard this story.
You have heard it now."
- Thomas King
In Cahobonctio, El Estor-Panzos, Guatemala, Q’ecchi’ community members gather for Covid19 prevention training and emergency supplies. This group includes plaintiffs in the landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits in Canada for mining-linked gang-rapes, killings, shootings and the wholescale burning and destruction of their villages to the ground.
“Climate Change in Central America: The Drug War Connection”
lays out over-lapping injustices, violence and corruption characterizing the corrupt, U.S. / Canadian-backed, ‘open-for-global-business’ regimes in Honduras & Guatemala.
By Kendra McSweeney and Erik Nielsen, May 13, 2020
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2020/05/13/climate-change-in-central-america-the-drug-war-connection/
Covid19 & the repressive, corrupt, U.S./Canadian-backed regime in Honduras
As Covid19 ravages Honduras’ impoverished majority, reports surface of ever more members of the regime being exposed for corruption and trafficking cocaine north to U.S. & Canadian cocaine markets.
President of Honduras Congress Linked to Cachiros Drug Cartel
by Alex Papadovassilakis, MAY 13, 2020
https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/president-honduras-congress-cachiros/
Expediente Público reports that Mauricio Oliva Herrera, president of Honduras’ corrupt National Congress, acquired properties from Inversiones Acrópolis, a company linked to Honduran drug trafficking family “the Cachiros”.
Honduras during Covid19: Why we shouldn’t go back to normal
By Karen Spring, Honduras Solidarity Network,
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted (April 30) Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla Valladares, former head of U.S. funded and trained Honduran National Police, on drug trafficking charges. The indictment takes direct aim at President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The Two Deaths of Agent Sherill Hernández in Honduras
by Héctor Silva Ávalos, Ángela Olaya, Seth Robbins, May 21, 2020, https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/two-deaths-sherill-hernandez-honduras/
28 year-old Honduran investigator Sherill Yubissa Hernández Mancía was found dead in her home in 2018. She was head of a police unit investigating connections between drug traffickers, government officials, agents in her own unit and the MS13 street gang.
The HSN reports that another member of the US & Cdn-backed regime - Congressman Hugo Pinto - was killed on May 16. Pinto worked w/ drug associates of Tony Hernandez, brother of regime leader (“president”) Juan Orlando Hernandez. https://twitter.com/hondurassol/status/1264684469492932608
The Honduras Anti-Corruption Council reports (April 27) on a corruption ring overvaluing purchases of Covid19 masks by $2.3 million. The companies involved are linked to the National Party in power.
U.S. deporting thousands during Covid19, causing spread of Covid19
“The Wuhan of the Americas”: U.S. Deports COVID-19-Positive Immigrants to Haiti & Guatemala
Democracy Now, May 15, 2020
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/5/15/us_deportations_haiti_guatemala_coronavirus
U.S. Using Covid19 as Excuse to Send Asylum Seekers Back Into Harm’s Way
By Sandra Cuffe, Truthout, May 19, 2020
The Trump administration began agenda of shutting down asylum in the U.S. right out of the gate, and COVID-19 has now provided a new justification. The U.S. government has essentially shut down asylum at the southern border with Mexico while the U.S. spreads the virus through deportations.
Covid19 & the repressive, ‘open-for-global-business’ regime in Guatemala
While the U.S. and Canadian-backed regime in Guatemala allows ‘for-export’ sectors of the economy to operate as “essential services” (mining, dams, food production, maquiladora “sweatshops” garment factories) – keeping the “supplies lines” going for consumers in faraway wealthy countries, the military and police use threats and violence to push people into further risk of death by malnutrition and disease.
Guatemala's white flags indicate pandemic's deadly side-effect: hunger
Jeff Abbott, 22 May 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/may/22/guatemala-white-flags-hunger-coronavirus
América Reyes sits on steps of Guatemala’s National Cathedral, with her four-year-old son, a white flag in her hand, a symbol of gnawing hunger amid military-imposed Covid19 lockdown which has brought the country’s informal economy to a grinding halt.
Expulsados de su comunidad en plena pandemia
11 de Mayo de 2020
https://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/expulsados-de-su-comunidad-en-plena-pandemia
In midst of Covd19, the Guatemalan regime illegally evicts Mayan Pocomchi community from ancestral lands, on behalf of coffee-producing local elites.
PDH: Pacientes con coronavirus en el IGSS duermen en sillas, hacinados y en medio de basura Por Maria Andrea Dominguez Velasco, 22 de mayo de 2020
Race, class, “supply chains” of food & COVID19
Living conditions for Jamaican and Latin American migrant farmworkers in Ontario, keeping multi-billion dollar agri-food industry profitable (for whom?), keeping "supplies chains" of food open to Canadian consumers.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1262026764643164160
Crowded housing and essential jobs: Why so many Latinos are getting coronavirus
By Antonio Olivo, Marissa J. Lang, John D. Harden, May 25, 2020
Rich powerful country politics as usual, in times of Covid19
Venezuela and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Despite blockade, Venezuela has recorded just 10 deaths as a result of the coronavirus
By Maria Páez Victor / May 25, 2020
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/venezuela-and-the-covid-19-pandemic
Cuba begins mass testing for Covid-19 as new cases fall to fewer than 20 per day
Reuters in Havana, 12 May 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/cuba-coronavirus-covid19-mass-testing
Who is afraid of what?
A normal, spectacular embarrassment: U.S. government publishes pathetic propaganda lying about Cuba and its Covid19 response. More ‘rotten-to-the-core’ foreign policies of the gringo regime.
US Embassy Guatemala @usembassyguate: "La verdad sobre las misiones médicas de Cuba" / “The truth about Cuba medical misssions”
Canada spending $19 billion on fighter jets won’t fight COVID-19 or climate change
Instead of buying a new weapons system, the federal government should disarm and invest in a Green New Deal
By Tamara Lorincz, May 12, 2020
In July 2019, the Canadian government launched a $19-billion competition for 88 new fighter jets. As governments try to control the spread of Covid19 – some doing this better, some worse – and save lives, Canada plans to “get back to normal”, spending billions on military jets able to destroy and kill lives on a mass scale.
Canadian company positions for mining ban lift in Argentine province
by John C. Cannon, 11 May 2020
Yamana Gold, a Cdn mining company, has partnered with a firm in Argentina to handle “all environmental, social, and governance” issues associated with a gold mining project. Mining has been banned in province of Chubut since 2003, due to protests through early 2020. COVID-19 has restricted the movement of Argentina’s citizens. Now, Yamana Gold and the government are taking advantage of the crisis.
Seemingly, Canadian Covid19 policies are: Try to implement healthy Covid19 response policies INSIDE our borders; Push OUTSIDE our borders to maximize OUR economic benefit.
Canadian mining company in Peru [Hudbay Minerals] tried to cover up COVID-19 outbreak endangering workers, community
May 14, 2020, ThinkPol Media Inc
[Hudbay Minerals, a] Canadian mining company, stands accused of trying to cover up a COVID-19 outbreak at one of its mines in Peru jeopardizing the health of workers and the nearby communities, according to a report by a human rights organization.
A charter city finally in Honduras?
by Tyler Cowen, May 19, 2020
U.S.-based Covid19 investment vultures (https://prospera.hn) work with military-backed narco-trafficking regime in Honduras to establish luxury “charter city” enclave on Caribbean island.
“A charter city within a narco state”
(ofraneh @ofraneh)
U.S.-led interventions in Latin America, supported by Canada, worsening impacts of Covid-19
Canada politicizes pandemic to seek intervention in Venezuela
by FERNANDO ARCE, May 15, 2020
https://www.mediacoop.ca/story/canada-politicizes-pandemic-seek-intervention-vene/36976
We are not “all in this together”
There should be no “going back to normal”
Rights Action’s COVID-19 Response Fund
https://mailchi.mp/rightsaction/rights-action-covid19-response-fund-update
Rights Action continues to prioritize getting emergency funds to partner group in Guatemala and Honduras. Their Covid19 response work is about saving lives. The funds we are sending are drops in a bucket, and they are important. Our work is also to contribute to discussion and hopefully empower political activism premised on the basic notion that: We are not “all in this together” / There should be no “getting back to normal”.
