Honduran migrants are caught between economic despair and militarized crackdowns
By Sandra Cuffe, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 3, 2020

“Mr. Wanless, I do not need to hear from you”, said Judge Fred Myers of the Ontario Superior Court during the September 30, 2020 Hudbay Minerals lawsuit hearing, indicating he had no need to listen to arguments from lawyers for the plaintiffs Cory Wanless and Murray Klippenstein.

“The 11 women’s accounts of the trauma that the alleged gang-rapes caused them are unfathomable. Five were pregnant at the time; four miscarried, and one, three days from her due date when she was allegedly gang-raped, said in a deposition that she gave birth to a stillborn that “was all blue or green.””

~ In depth article from The Intercept, by Max Binks-Collier ~

Rights Action remembers and honors Adolfo Ich Chaman, a Mayan Q’eqchi’ environmental, territorial, human rights defender, assassinated September 27, 2009, by Hudbay Mineral’s security guards

For reasons related to Covid-19, the landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits were suspended earlier this year.

Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020, 10am
The lawsuits will continue, with a ‘virtual hearing’ in Toronto. (We are seeking information as to whether the public will be able to listen, ‘virtually’.)

These are tough times for many people across the planet, particularly in countries of the global south, like Guatemala and Honduras. Tough times caused by the “normal pandemics” of poverty and exploitation, racism and discriminations, violence and dispossession, corruption and impunity, and the unequal nation-state system – all now worsened by Covid19.

“What Hondurans long suspected and Americans later found out was that the president of Honduras, who has functional control of all branches of government, is also deeply implicated in drug trafficking to the United States. … Not surprisingly, a country run by organized crime became consumed by [drug trafficking] from top to bottom.”

“The United States has protected corrupt politicians, the United States has protected drug traffickers,” said Bartolo Fuentes, a one-time member of Congress and migrant-rights activist who lives in El Progreso, Honduras. “They know (President Hernandez) is a criminal, but he is servile. Whatever they ask, he does.”