Ecuador’s National Assembly President Fernando Cordero closed a highly-anticipated plenary session last Thursday by declaring that the controversial new water law would not be voted on until there has been prior consultation with communities. Cordero’s unilateral decision means that final treatment of the law will likely be delayed for months.
Twelve people were kidnapped and disappeared in San Juan Copala on May 16, following the ambush of a caravan on April 27 in which two human rights activists were murdered by Unión de Bienestar de la Región Triqui (Ubisort) paramilitaries. The twelve disappeared are women and children. The kidnapping appeared to be a reprisal for the call to send a second, international and larger caravan to San Juan Copala, scheduled for June 8.
Kayapó Indian leader Raoni Metuktire arrived in Europe last week and has appealed for support for his tribe, which is campaigning against the Belo Monte dam on the Xingu river in the Brazilian Amazon. Raoni […]
Amnesty International has called on the Mexican authorities to protect an Indigenous community blockaded by more than 30 paramilitary gunmen with links to one of the country’s main political parties. The 700 people living in […]
In an act of implacable defiance, the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala has called on civil organizations to organize another Human Rights caravan to attempt to break the paramilitary blockade surrounding their besieged headquarters in the indigenous Triqui region of Oaxaca, Mexico. The caravan, called for May 30-31, hopes for the participation of hundreds of national and international human Rights observers and activists, and will be convened by Diocesan Commission of Peace and Justice, and the Bartolomé Carrasco Regional Human Rights Center.
“It’s a nightmare from which you never wake up,” said a coordinator for Partners in Health in Port-au-Prince, referring to the January 12 earthquake and its social aftermath. The ‘nightmare’ has long roots in structural violence, the set of national and international systems and policies that have left the majority in Haiti (and the world) neglected and resource-poor.
The embarrassment over the detention of USAID employee Alan Gross on spy charges last December, and his links to the U.S. government’s controversial democracy promotion programs, has shed light on a murky area of U.S. politics and may have far-reaching consequences for the future of U.S.-Cuba relations.
(Tierramérica) – The longstanding debate between eviction or upgrading of Rio’s “favelas” or slums has gathered new force as this one-time capital of Brazil still shows the hillside scars left by rain-induced landslides in early […]
(IPS) – “Fuera Ecoltec!” (Get out Ecoltec!) protesters chanted in a demonstration Sunday in the Mexican town of Apaxco, one year after the start of a community blockade of a toxic waste processing plant run […]
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