During the first week of April, the Honduran daily newspaper La Prensa ran a series of articles that included photos, a video and a link to a montage of past articles entitled Terror en el Bajo Aguán. The major thrust of the series is that there are heavily armed clandestine groups of men training in the region. The photos and video show them, all wearing ski masks, with AK47s, M16s, and .223 assault rifles, all of which are military issue.
Source: Amazon Watch Almost four years ago gunshots in the Peruvian Amazon were heard around the world. On the morning of June 5th, 2009, the Peruvian anti-riot police moved in to evict indigenous protesters blocking […]
After more than two years of delay, the Guatemalan Minister of Energy and Mines (MEM) announced on Wednesday, April 3, that it had approved the exploitation license for Tahoe Resources’ Escobal mine in San Rafael […]
Northland Films’ GOLD FEVER, a new documentary about international gold mining, World Premieres this Saturday at the Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY). The screening, at the Whitney Center for the Humanities, April 13, 7PM, […]
Some 30 protesters crashed the opening of the sixth Expominas trade fair at the Quito Exhibition Center April 3, where Ecuador’s government sought to win new investors for the mineral and oil sectors. The protesters, mostly women, interrupted the event’s inaugural speech with an alternative rendition of the song “Latinoamérica” by the Puerto Rican hip-hop outfit Calle 13, with lyrics referencing places in the country threatened by mining: “You cannot buy Intag, you cannot buy Mirador, you can’t buy Kimsacocha, you can’t buy my Ecuador.”
Source: Truthout The Inter-American Human Rights commission is deliberating a case against the state of Mexico for police violence against women dissidents that has serious implications for the perpetration of sexual violence by police everywhere. […]
“It’s certain that death squads are a product of the impunity that we’ve seen in Honduras. The death squads of the past were never really dismantled. What we’re witnessing is a reactivation of these death squads. And we’re seeing it quite clearly. We’ve seen videos of incidents in the street where masked men with military training and unmarked vehicles assassinate young people,” said Bertha Oliva, the General Coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained in Honduras (COFADEH).
Below is a new communique from the Aguan campesino organizations condemning the escalation of violence and the propaganda to justify violence against the campesinos of Aguan. In recent weeks there have been more assassinations and […]
Peasants and human rights defenders in Brazil are indignant over the acquittal of the man accused of ordering the May 2011 murders of two prominent Amazon activists, José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife Maria do Espírito Santo. When the sentences were read out, activists and rural workers burned crosses and threw stones at the courthouse windows.
The community of San Josecito in northern Colombia is an idyllic collection of wooden houses linked by dirt streets where the only traffic is the free-roaming livestock. Yet it is a community where every man, woman and child has a tragedy to tell. It is also a community that, since its inception, has lived with the ever-present threat of violence and the knowledge that to leave its wire-fenced perimeter is to put your life at risk.
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