Novidades

Colombia: Somos Defensores Annual Report documents 106 killings of HRDs in 2017 – with 18 in January 2018 alone

05/03/2018

“Piedra en el Zapato” – “Stone in the Shoe”.

Bogotá D.C. March 1, 2018 – Communications Programma Somos Defensores

Programma Somos Defensores Annual Report for 2017 looks at the critical situation for HRDs in Colombia.

Yes, peace brought less general violence in Colombia but instead the violence focused on social leaders and human rights defenders (HRDs). 2017 was a sad year considering the 32.5% increase in killings which resulted in the deaths of 106 HRDs while 2018 seems likely to continue the same trend with 18 killings of HRDs in January alone. The government continues to issue decrees that are never implemented and we still don’t know if the new government will shelve them. Social leaders in rural areas of the country are facing another year of targeted violence that shows no sign of abating.

This report is an analysis of a year that we do not want to repeat.

Download the report HERE

Watch our launch video HERE

2017 was a year in which the armed confrontation and its endless list of victims ceased to be daily news. The signing and beginning of the implementation of the Peace Agreements, brought about a substantial decrease in deaths; However, in the midst of this positive trend, another phenomenon became increasingly evident and showed an unacceptable increase: the murder of social leaders and HRDs in Colombia.

Despite the peace process there are a number of trends which continue to put the lives of HRDs at risk: HRDs continue to be the target of systematic violence due to, newly emerging conflicts, : the absence of a state presence in some areas, the unbridled focus on the extraction of natural resources; drug trafficking; the fight for the land; hate crimes; corruption; the struggles of other guerrilla groups of paramilitary descent, the growing presence of Mexican drug cartels and organised crime in ex-FARC areas, among others.

Undoubtedly, 2017 was the most critical year in the eight year term of President Juan Manuel Santos. This level of violence against HRDs is very serious and besides worrying the human rights community, researchers, the international community and sectors sensitive to the phenomenon, it has become a STONE IN THE SHOE (Piedra em el Zapato) of the Santos Government in the context of its policy to create the conditions for peace. And at the same time HRDs in Colombia are also the “STONE IN THE SHOE” for those who want to seize control of the national territory, using any available means.

During 2017, 560 HRDs were attacked, which figure included 106 killings (32.5% increase), 370 threats, 50 attacks, 23 arbitrary detentions, 9 judicial proceedings and 2 thefts of sensitive information. Looking at the figures for the killings we can see that there was progress in 30% of the cases. In relation to killings of HRDs this report includes a comparative analysis of the various reports produced by social and human rights organisations in 2017. In this analysis we have found considerable convergence in the findings across all these reports in relation to, the number of killings of HRDs, the pattern of the killings, the profile of the leaders targeted, the areas with the highest number of killings and the identity of the alleged perpetrators.

The report also examines a number of issues that are central to the protection of HRDs, including:

  • the role of the new legal provisions derived from the Havana Agreement on issues for the protection of defenders that have not yet been implemented and remain on paper;

  • the failure of the Colombian Government to take preventive action;

  • the lack of progress in the Prosecutor’s office that is still not in a position to meet the demand for justice;

  • the slow response of state bodies in taking pre-emptive action before the massacre of defenders

  • the ongoing and constant stigmatisation of these activists that with the upcoming elections will raise the level of danger they face in every corner of the country.

But despite such bad news, the report also notes concrete proposals to get the country out of this mess and start looking for joint solutions to a problem that far from diminishing, is increasing daily and seems to want to stay for a long time. There is an urgent need to alert candidates to the Presidency so that, if they are elected, they don’t simply file this vital issue for the future of the country away in a drawer.

For the publication of this report we have counted on the invaluable collaboration of several prominent national cartoonists, who in solidarity have used their images to portray the reality faced by the country’s social leaders. So a special thanks to Julio César González – MATADOR, Pablo Pérez – ALTAIS, Carlos Arturo Romero, Marco Pinto, Harold Trujillo – CHÓCOLO and Cecilia Ramos – LA CHÉ. Your work may be appreciated in the report.

The complete figures on attacks against human rights defenders in Colombia for 2017 and other periods can be consulted at www.somosdefensores.org

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Carlos A. Guevara J.
Coordinador Comunicaciones, Incidencia y Sistema de Información – SIADDHH
Programa Somos Defensores-PNGPDDH
@SomosDef
Cel. (057) 3176677053
Tel.(057  1) 2814010
www.somosdefensores.org
Bogotá – Colombia

Dos de cada tres activistas asesinados el año pasado eran latinoamericanos

22/01/2018

Source El País

Author: Felipe Sánchez

Al menos 212 defensores de derechos humanos fueron asesinados el año pasado en América Latina, según un informe de la ONG Front Line Defenders, con sede en Dublín (Irlanda). El documento, difundido a principios de mes y presentado la semana pasada en castellano, señala que la mayoría de crímenes en la región corresponde a Colombia y Brasil, que juntos registran 156 víctimas (73,5%). La suma de este tipo de asesinatos en el continente representa más de dos tercios del total mundial registrado por la organización internacional (312).

La particularidad del caso colombiano está en que mientras la guerrilla de las FARC entregó las armas el año anterior como parte de los acuerdos de paz con el Gobierno de Juan Manuel Santos, las bandas criminales y paramilitares se han desplegado para perseguir y asesinar a líderes sociales, principalmente en las regiones en las que operaba el grupo. Naciones Unidas registra hasta el pasado 20 de diciembre 105 asesinatos de defensores de los derechos humanos en el país sudamericano; el 59% de estos perpetrados por sicarios.

MÁS INFORMACIÓN

“La violencia contra los defensores de derechos humanos se intensificó a la par de las crisis políticas y económicas en Venezuela, Brasil, Guatemala, Paraguay, Honduras y Argentina”, remarca el informe de Front Line Defenders, que cuenta con la ayuda de una red de organizaciones sobre el terreno para recolectar los datos de cada país.

Venezuela es el caso más emblemático entre los enumerados por la organización. El país sudamericano vivió una ola de protestas entre abril y julio contra los ataques del régimen al Parlamento, de mayoría opositora, en la que hubo más de 120 muertos, según la Fiscalía. La ofensiva antidemocrática del régimen de Nicolás Maduro desembocó en el establecimiento, en agosto, de una Asamblea Constituyente conformada únicamente por el chavismo que usurpó las funciones del Parlamento opositor.

“En Brasil se produjo un aumento de la violencia y de la participación [en esta] de las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado”, afirma el documento sobre el segundo país con el mayor número de asesinatos en la región junto a Colombia. “En mayo, 10 defensores pacíficos del derecho a la tierra fueron abatidos a tiros por la policía en Pau-d’Arco [Estado de Pará, en la región amazónica]. Seis semanas después, un testigo de la masacre que se había escondido también fue asesinado”, agrega el texto, que apunta a los activistas en favor de los pueblos indígenas y la defensa de la tierra como las principales víctimas del país.

Ola ultraconservadora

El informe alerta, sin embargo: “La violencia […] se ha extendido a otros sectores e incluye ataques en áreas urbanas, por ejemplo, contra defensores de derechos humanos que trabajan en las favelas de Río de Janeiro o grupos LGBTI en Curitiba”.

Con respecto a este último punto, el diagnóstico de la ONG coincide con el ascenso de una ola ultraconservadora en el gigante sudamericano que incluye intentos de agresión contra la filósofa feminista estadounidense Judith Butler o el boicot de una exposición artística sobre género y diversidad sexual en un museo de Porto Alegre.

Front Line Defenders también llama la atención sobre el caso de México, que a pocos días del fin de 2017 amenazaba con cerrar su año más violento en dos décadas. “El 2017 también fue testigo del mayor número de asesinatos de activistas ambientales y periodistas registrados en [el país] en los últimos años”, subraya el informe. Y agrega: “La aprobación en diciembre de una nueva Ley de Seguridad Interior que permite la intervención de las fuerzas armadas en asuntos de seguridad pública es particularmente preocupante por la ambigüedad de la redacción, su probable implementación arbitraria y sus posibles efectos negativos en la protesta social”.

La región más peligrosa del mundo

Asesinatos. 212 defensores de derechos humanos fueron asesinados en 2017 en Latinoamérica, el 67,9% del total global (312), según la ONG Front Line Defenders.

Colombia. Este es el país con el mayor número de víctimas; registraba hasta el pasado 20 de diciembre 105 asesinatos de activistas, según el recuento de las Naciones Unidas.

Disminución. La cifra de 2017 es levemente menor a la de 2016, cuando la organización registró 217 crímenes de este tipo en la región (77,2% de la cifra mundial, 281 asesinatos).

Distribución. En 2016, el número de asesinatos de activistas se repartió así: Colombia (85), Brasil (58), Honduras (33), México (26), Guatemala (12), El Salvador (1), Peru (1) y Venezuela (1).

Guatemala: UDEFEGUA denuncia los procesos de criminalización de los/las defensores/as de derechos humanos

17/01/2018
“Desde el 2004 hemos intentado mantener un registro de un fenómeno que no se acota en el espacio y en el tiempo sino que permanece como una agresión constante similar a la de la desaparición forzada”. Source: La Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos

 

UDEFEGUA empezó a denunciar los procesos de criminalización a partir del año 2004, cuando el fenómeno que estaba, previamente, asociado con el abuso del delito de Usurpación Agravada en contra del movimiento campesino tiene un cambio substantivo tanto en sus modalidades como en el objetivo de su actuar.

Entre el 2004-2005 empieza a emerger de nuevo la figura penal de terrorismo y asociación ilícita tanto en las denuncias judiciales no fundamentadas como en las acciones públicas de difamación. Eso destapa una nueva dinámica de criminalización que se extiende como un cáncer a toda expresión de defensa de derechos humanos y libertades fundamentales. En los últimos años, la denuncia permanente de diversos movimientos sociales, organizaciones y defensores/as de derechos humanos ha permeado tanto las actividades nacionales e internacionales de denuncia de la situación guatemalteca.

La criminalización ha retado también a UDEFEGUA no sólo como víctima del proceso sino como organización que atiende a personas y organizaciones criminalizadas. Desde el 2004 a la fecha hemos intentado mantener un registro de un fenómeno que no se acota en el espacio y en el tiempo sino que permanece como una agresión constante similar a la de la desaparición forzada.

Asimismo, hemos tratado de denunciar los mecanismos pseudo – legales utilizados para mantener a una persona en proceso penal de forma indefinida. Hemos visto como el fenómeno no se detiene con la denuncia, sino muchas veces se profundiza como es el caso de los policías que denuncian penalmente a la ciudadanía antes de que estos, en acciones valerosas, puedan denunciar los vejámenes en su contra.

De esa cuenta, cuando observamos en las audiencias públicas de la Comisión Interamericana que los números de defensores y defensoras de derechos humanos criminalizados variaban mucho entre los denunciantes y que el estatus del criminalizado era poco claro, decidimos realizar una sistematización y actualización de los casos denunciados ante UDEFEGUA entre el año 2012 al 2017.

La sistematización genera un número alarmante de personas criminalizadas pero también vuelve a arrojarnos la dificultad que existe para actualizar la situación legal de las personas. A diferencia de otras sistematizaciones, la impunidad en torno a la criminalización se empieza a romper con algunas sentencias o decisiones judiciales que absuelven a los defensores y defensoras de derechos humanos. Sin embargo, a pesar de la claridad de los tribunales y juzgados de llamar a que se detenga la práctica, encontramos que el Ministerio Público sigue utilizando esa herramienta y una buena parte de Jueces siguen privilegiándola como respuesta ante la defensa de derechos humanos.

Un caso paradigmático es el de Abelino Chub Caal quien fuera acusado por hechos ocurridos en una comunidad cuando él no se encontraba en el lugar y que fuera individualizado por su labor de mediación en varios conflictos territoriales en El Estor, Izabal. La acción fiscal y judicial inicial le colocan en prisión preventiva y con un proceso de investigación abierto en su contra. La Fiscalía General interviene para garantizar una investigación imparcial a través del cambio de fiscalía que conoce el caso. La investigación establece, al momento de la acusación, que no hay hechos que incriminen al defensor en delito alguno. El juez decide no aceptar la posición fiscal y ordena ampliación de investigación y sostiene la prisión preventiva bajo el argumento de que así se evita que belino Chub ‘organice más invasiones a fincas’. La ruptura de la imparcialidad del juez permite el traslado del caso a otro juzgado; sin embargo, el tiempo pasa y Abelino sigue preso.

La sistematización arroja que situaciones similares han sido enfrentadas por varios defensores y defensoras de derechos humanos mientras purgan prisión preventiva; y, en su mayoría, es la situación que enfrentan la mayor parte de denunciados como consecuencia de su labor como defensores y defensoras de derechos humanos.

More than 300 Activists Murdered in 2017: Front Line Defenders Launches Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders At Risk

04/01/2018

Press Release

  • More than 300 Activists Murdered in 2017: Front Line Defenders Launches Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders At Risk
  • Más de 300 activistas asesinados en 2017: Front Line Defenders lanza un informe anual sobre los defensores de los derechos humanos en riesgo
  • Mais de 300 ativistas assassinados em 2017: Front Line Defenders lança relatório anual sobre defensores de direitos humanos em risco

Cover - 2017 Annual Report

Dedicated to the more than 300 human rights defenders murdered this year, the Front Line Defenders Annual Report on Human Rights Defenders At Risk opens with two pages listing the names of the deceased. Launched today in Dublin, the report details the physical attacks, threats, judicial harassment, and smear campaigns used by state, non-state, and corporate actors to hinder the work of peaceful human rights defenders (HRDs) around the world.

In 2017, 312 defenders in 27 countries were killed for their peaceful work, according to data collected by Front Line Defenders. More than two-thirds of these, 67% of the total number of activists killed, were defending land, environmental and indigenous peoples’ rights, nearly always in the context of mega projects, extractive industry and big business.

Of the cases tracked, only 12% of all murder cases resulted in the arrest of suspects. Impunity for acts of violence against HRDs continues to enable an environment of frequent killings, said the organisation, as does a chronic lack of protection for HRDs at risk. Of the cases for which data on threats was collected, 84% of murdered defenders received at least one targeted death threat prior to their killing.

“Around the world, defenders continue to tell us that police and government officials refuse to respond to requests for protection following death threats to activists,” said Executive Director Anderson, speaking at the launch of the report in Dublin. “Killings almost always occur following a series or pattern of threats, indicating that if preventive action were taken by police, and threats against defenders were taken seriously by authorities, HRD killings could be drastically reduced.” – Executive Director Andrew Anderson

In addition to the high rate of murders in 2017, criminalisation remained the most common strategy used to hinder the critical work of HRDs. In 2017, thousands of activists were detained on fabricated charges, subjected to lengthy, expensive and unfair legal processes or sentenced to long prison terms.

In a number of countries, authorities accused HRDs of “waging war against the state” and “secession,” charges which carry the death penalty. In the Middle East and North Africa, HRDs faced charges relating to terrorism, state security and espionage. In Vietnam, the government staged a systematic campaign against bloggers, academics and citizen journalists in 2017, with activists arrested, charged, labeled “enemies of the state” and given jail terms of up to ten years and addiiton time under house arrest.

The report also highlights that international pressure on governments who target HRDs is critical. In 2017, six HRDs in Sudan were detaiend and put on trial for “conspiracy to conduct espionage and intelligence activities in favour of foreign embassies” and “waging war against the state.” Three of them were detained for almost a year; two were tortured. Following an extensive campaign of domestic and international pressure, however, all six received a presidential pardon in August.

In many cases reported by Front Line Defenders, both judicial harassment and physical attacks were preceded by defamation and smear campaigns at the local level. Women human rights defenders around the world are increasingly reporting hyper-sexualized smear campaigns and defamation, which aim to limit their activism by eroding local support networks.

In response, according to Executive Direction Andrew Anderson, Front Line Defenders is working to promote HRD security with a range of protection programming. In addition to risk management and digital protection trainings, advocacy at the national, international, and EU level, emergency relocation, and nearly 500 protection grants provided to activists at risk in 2017, Front Line Defenders also works with HRDs to devise visibility campaigns to counteract the defamation and smear campaigns that put them at risk.

For more information or to speak with Front Line Defenders, please contact:
Erin Kilbride
erin@frontlinedefenders.org
+353 85 863 3655

Russia: Historian Arseny Roginsky who recovered the names of the millions executed under Stalin and others, has died aged 71

02/01/2018

Source: The Guardian

The Russian

The Russian historian Arseny Roginsky, who has died aged 71, made it his mission to record and recover the names of the millions who had been imprisoned or executed under Joseph Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders. In 1988 he helped to found Memorial, one of the first independent human rights organisations allowed to be established after Mikhail Gorbachev started to liberalise Soviet politics.

A soft-spoken scholar of great intellectual courage, Roginsky argued that remembering the past with empathy and accuracy was crucial to the construction of a civilised society. It was not enough to build monuments. Every persecuted individual’s fate had to be discovered and made known.

The impetus for his life’s work came partly from his own family history. Roginsky’s father, Boris, an electrical engineer and Talmudic scholar from Leningrad, was twice arrested and sent to labour camps. On his first release he was confined to internal exile in the remote northern village of Velsk in the Archangel region, where his son Arseny was born.

Re-arrested, Boris Roginsky died in detention in 1951 but it was not until 1955, when Arseny was nine, that his mother was informed her husband was dead, allegedly of a heart attack. For four years she had continued to send him food parcels without being told it was a waste of time and resources.

Arseny studied at the University of Tartu in what was then the Soviet republic of Estonia. He graduated from the history and philology faculty in 1968, the year in which Soviet tanks and troops invaded Czechoslovakia to crush a movement trying to reform communism. It was a formative experience which also radicalised several intellectuals who later became Gorbachev’s leading advisers. One of Roginsky’s classmates was the poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who was arrested for demonstrating in Red Square against the invasion.

Roginsky described himself later as a child of 1968. Less provocatively than Gorbanevskaya, but equally bravely, he moved to Leningrad and started interviewing survivors of the labour camps and creating an archive on the pattern of what the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was doing separately for his book The Gulag Archipelago. Roginsky’s official jobs were as a bibliographer at Leningrad’s main public library and a teacher of Russian language and literature in evening schools. In his spare time he founded an underground group called Memory (Pamyat), and from 1975 to 1981 edited its collections of historical works. They were circulated privately and illegally in what was known as samizdat (self-publishing), and from 1978 they were smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published abroad.

The KGB searched Roginsky’s flat in February 1977 and again in March 1979. Although they found nothing, he was fired from the evening school where he taught. Two years later he was offered the choice of forced emigration or detention. He chose the latter and was sentenced to four years in camps for “the production and sale of forged documents”, and “for transferring materials abroad to anti-Soviet publications”.

On release he found himself swept up in the liberalisation of the media and the lifting of censorship – glasnost – ordered by Gorbachev. A longtime admirer of Russian radicals from the 19th and early 20th century, such as the People’s Will movement and the largely rural Socialist Revolutionaries, Roginsky compiled a book in 1989 called Memories of Peasant Tolstoyans, the 1910s-1930s.

As glasnost accelerated, his academic work soon took a back seat to public organising. Roginsky joined with friends, including the physicist Andrei Sakharov, in creating Memorial, known officially as the Historical and Educational, Human Rights and Humanitarian Society, Memorial. From 1998 he was chairman of its board. Memorial had many achievements. Apart from getting a monument to repressed Soviet citizens erected near the KGB’s headquarters in Lubyanka square in 1991 (a massive piece of stone from the Solovetsky islands, where several camps used to be located), Memorial helped to discover numerous sites of mass graves of repressed citizens in and around Moscow and other cities. But its wish for the state to create a publicly funded library and archive of repression and government-sponsored crimes has never been fulfilled.

Under Vladimir Putin’s more authoritarian leadership, several Memorial branches in different Russian cities were raided and the organisation was forced to register as a “foreign agent” in 2014 because it received funds from abroad – a step described by Roginsky as a “huge blow”. But, in a sign of the complexity of current Russian politics, Roginsky took a seat on the presidential commission overseeing the building of the Wall of Sorrow, a massive monument to victims of Soviet repression. Putin unveiled it in October. Although some human rights activists called Putin hypocritical and sneered at the project, Roginsky welcomed it. “A monument on behalf of the state is necessary because the state must clearly say terror is a crime,” he told a Russian news website.

Taken ill a year ago, Roginsky moved to Tel Aviv for cancer treatment, and retreated from public activity.

He is survived by his second wife, Yekaterina, and their son, Aleksandr, and two children, Boris and Asya, from his first marriage, which ended in divorce.

All his life Arseny Roginsky worked relentlessly to preserve the memory of victims of political terror in the Soviet Union. One of his last projects called “the last address” consisted in putting memorial signs on buildings in Russian cities indicating the names and personal information of persons who had been living there and who were arrested before disappearing in Soviet camps.

Front Line Defenders would like to convey its sincere condolences to the family, colleagues and friends of Arseny Roginsky.

• Arseny Borisovich Roginsky, historian and human rights campaigner, born 30 March 1946; died 18 December 2017

You can read the original article here

Mines and Money: the human cost of the global mining industry

12/12/2017

Source The Ecologist

Authors: Hannibal Rhoades, Tatiana Garavito and Sebastian Ordoñez

Community leaders from Colombia, the Philippines and Uganda have been in London challenging attendees of the Mines and Money Conference.

Protesters confronted by armed police. Leandro Taques. Cachoeira Escura, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
London Mining Network

Environmental and Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs) from the frontlines of mining struggles in the Philippines, Colombia and Uganda travelled to London to expose the true costs of the UK’s extensive ties to the global mining industry and oppose the Mines and Money Conference.

The annual Mines and Money brought together more than 2,000 mining company representatives and investors hoping to cut deals that expand one of the world’s deadliest, most polluting industries.

Keynote speeches were delivered by Arron Banks, the Brexit financier, and Nigel Farage, the former UK Independence Party leader.. They provided advice on how mining companies can most ably exploit the political and economic climate post-Brexit, especially with regards to extracting wealth from the global south.

Mining-affected communities

The delegation of frontline defenders formed part of a week of creative action called Rise, Resist, Renew: Alternatives to Mines and Money. The action was designed to highlight London’s role in the expansion of global mining destruction, reminding UK citizens that deals struck here often mean displacement, destruction and death for communities living on mineral-rich lands around the world.

The express aim of Mines and Money, which took place last month, is to match-make big money with big mines, helping finance flow to new and undeveloped projects – it advertises itself as the event where ‘deals get done’.

The mines that result are getting bigger, deadlier and more prone to catastrophic disasters. Mining is currently the world’s most deadly industry for the people who stand in the way of mining projects, and for those who lose lands and livelihoods to its operations.

As a hub of global mining finance and power, London is a logical location for the conference. Many of the world’s biggest mining companies are listed on the London Stock Exchange and conduct their business through London. Still more companies are listed on the city’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

British high street and investment banks, pension funds and insurance companies invest hundreds of millions of pounds a year in mining projects across the globe, connecting working people’s earnings in Britain with the struggles of mining-affected communities around the world.

Government officials

The mining industry also enjoys deep and longstanding connections with the UK government, which often gives UK-based mining companies diplomatic support overseas, even when their activities are opposed by local people.

Just 101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) collectively control over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources, according to a 2016 report from War on Want. They are enabled by the UK government’s power and influence.

The report highlights a pattern human rights abuses, forced migration and ecological destruction that is characteristic of neo-colonial extraction pervasive throughout the global south. This further demonstrates the UK’s role as a safe haven for the mining industry.

Around the world, the operations of UK-linked mining companies are facing staunch resistance from communities seeking to protect land, water and livelihoods from the impacts of mining. This resistance is rendered invisible at Mines and Money, which presides over panels on ‘responsible’, ‘sustainable’ mining without seeking contributions from affected communities.

Throughout the week of the conference, the delegation of EHRDs from Colombia, the Philippines and Uganda shared their experiences of the impacts of UK-linked mining projects in their territories, and of their resistance, with the UK public, NGOs and government officials.

Frontline defenders

Camila Mendez from youth collective COSAJUCA in Cajamarca, Colombia, shared her experience of Cajamarca’s recent popular consultation on mining, in which 98 percent of residents who turned out voted to ban AngloGold Ashanti’s planned La Colosa gold mine. Throughout the week, Camila called on the UK to support popular consultations, even as Colombia’s Central government seeks to restrict them.

“We are living in a mining dictatorship”, says Camila. “Our government needs to stop pushing mining and recognise the constitutional right of citizens to participate in popular consultations on the future of their territories. If Colombia is to have peace we must have environmental justice.”

Filipino human rights defender and Coordinator of Kalikasan PNE, Enteng Bautista, shared the violence environmental defenders opposing mining operations face in the Philippines as a result of mining interests, including those of British companies.

“The real risks are for those in the communities themselves”, says Enteng. “In the province of Batangas, Canadian and British mining interests are aiming to open large open cast gold mine operations near the town of Lobo. The local community strongly opposes the mine, which threatens an environmental disaster for farmers and fishing communities. Since August this year three local anti-mining activists have been killed and five environmental defenders were illegally arrested in Batangas.”

Resource speculation

The delegation of frontline defenders also took the opportunity while they were in London to share the alternatives to contested mining-based development, both in their territories and globally.

Alice Kazimura from the Buliisa Women’s Development Association, Uganda, joined campaigners via video link to share her community’s experiences of resisting the operations of Tullow Oil, an Anglo-Irish oil company registered on London’s Alternative Investment Market.

Alice’s community, Kakindo, is developing alternatives to the extractive mining-for-development model pushed by governments worldwide. “We are promoting alternative sources of energy, such as solar energy, so that we reduce dependence on fossil fuels and the need to extract more oil and gas”, says Alice.

“We have also been having practical women’s exchanges and experience sharing on the methods used for agro-ecological farming. These are farming methodologies suitable for a small piece of land and we are doing economic activities like weaving, which bring women together…creating safe spaces for women to deliberate on their own issues and do women’s movement building.”

Finite planet

The delegation of frontline defenders and their UK allies repeatedly stressed that minerals and metals are finite, so a future beyond extractivism is inevitable.

Rather than looking to a future of increased extraction to satisfy the minority economic interests behind extractive projects and over consumption in economically richer countries, we need to challenge an economic growth model that drives needless resource speculation, inequality, injustice, forced migration and climate change.

This journey starts, in part, by bringing the nexus of extractive power to account in safe havens like London. “We are here (in London) and wherever the mining companies go, we will go, to tell them we are against extractivism”, says Camila Mendéz.

“Through this visit we sent a clear message to global mining industry: when people come together in defence of their land and environment, there is nothing that can stop them. We cannot have infinite economic growth on a finite planet, there are many alternatives to the current development model, and we must explore them and implement them now!”

These Authors

Hannibal Rhoades is Communications and Advocacy Coordinator at The Gaia Foundation, a UK-based organisation working internationally to support indigenous and local communities to revive their knowledge, livelihoods and healthy ecosystems. Tatiana Garavito is a racial justice activist, an intersectional feminist and a co-founder of Organising for Change. Sebastian Ordoñez is the senior international programmes officer for War on Want.

 

Philippines: Karapatan lodges 25 cases of EJE’s with United Nations Special Rapporteurs

04/12/2017

Source The Philippine Star

MANILA, Philippines — Human rights advocate group Karapatan yesterday filed a second batch of complaints before the United Nations in connection with cases of extrajudicial killings (EJKs) allegedly perpetrated by state security forces of the Duterte administration.

In two separate letters dated Dec. 2 submitted to UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killing Agnes Callamard and UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders Michel Forst, Karapatan called for the immediate investigation of 25 cases of summary killings committed “in line with the intensifying counter-insurgency program of the administration of President Duterte.”

“From one counter-insurgency program to another, cases of extrajudicial killings against peasants, indigenous peoples, Moro, workers, women and youth continue to be committed with impunity under the murderous Duterte regime,” Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay said in the letter.

“We allege that state security forces are primarily responsible for these killings that are all in the context of a government program that makes no distinction between armed and unarmed civilians, thus providing a pretext for the arbitrary tagging of individuals, groups and movements as ‘enemies of the state’,” she added.

Karapatan submitted its first batch of complaints before Callamard and Forst in April of this year concerning 47 cases of EJKs under the Duterte administration.

Karapatan said that from July 2016 to October 2017, it has documented 104 victims of EJKs under Duterte’s counter-insurgency program. The group said this is on top of 20 incidents of forced evacuations and 17 cases of aerial bombardment.

“Duterte’s recent pronouncements and direct orders on the crackdown on progressive groups and on attacks against human rights defenders, political dissenters and ordinary folks embolden state forces to further violate people’s rights,” Karapatan’s new letter of complaint read.

Just last week, Duterte said he ordered the police and the military to shoot armed members of the communist group New People’s Army, adding that his office is already preparing an executive order declaring the NPA as terrorist group.

Duterte also said he would slap Callamard if she probes the EJKs in line with his administration’s war on drugs.

In its letter, Karapatan said Callamard and Forst, who are both under the Geneva-based Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), must hasten their investigation on the EJK cases in the Philippines as “most, if not all, of the perpetrators of human rights violations under the administrations of former Presidents Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and president Benigno Simeon Aquino III have not been brought to justice.”

The group attached to the letters documentation of each of the 25 EJK cases. The group said most of the victims were peasant leaders and members of various human rights advocate groups.

Among them were Carolina Arado, 52, a member of a progressive farmers’ group in Compostela Valley staunchly opposing the entry of large-scale mining corporations in the province.

Karapatan said Arado was killed by armed men believed to be members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) 46th Infantry Battalion-Philippine Army on July 13, 2017 inside her residence in Mabini town. Arado’s husband Carlito and their four children were wounded from the incident.

The group also documented the killing of Daniol Lasib, 58, a barangay councilor and member of the B’laan tribe in Matanao, Davao Del Sur.

Karapatan said on May 26, 2017, Lasib was on his way to Dalapo medical clinic to visit his confined daughter when five gunmen fired at him and his companion. Lasib sustained 11 gunshot wounds, majority on his head, which caused his immediate death. His companion survived.

Colombia: ¿Quiénes los están matando? La lista roja de defensores de derechos humanos

“El doloroso listado de asesinatos de defensores/as de derechos humanos en Colombia, que entre el año 2016 y lo que va corrido de 2017 llegó a 200 homicidios”.

Source El Espectador

Con el reciente asesinato de un líder social, la cifra llega a 200 entre 2016 y lo que va corrido de 2017. Fiscalía trabaja en esclarecimiento de casos.

A comienzos de la semana pasada fue asesinado en el municipio de Caloto (Cauca), Jair Mera. Se trata del integrante de la comunidad indígena Huellas y hermano de la exconsejera de la Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca (Acin), Luz Eida Julicué Gómez. Su homicidio se produjo a manos de sicarios que le propinaron varios disparos. Lo paradójico del hecho es que, según la Red de Derechos Humanos del Suroccidente Colombiano, el hecho ocurrió a menos de 200 metros de la estación de policía y cerca de una base militar.

De esta manera, aumentó el doloroso listado de asesinatos de defensores de derechos humanos en Colombia, que entre el año 2016 y lo que va corrido de 2017 llegó a 200 homicidios. Una cifra que se consolidó luego de cruzar los reportes oficiales de la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU), el movimiento político Marcha Patriótica, la organización Cumbre Nacional Agraria y la Defensoría del Pueblo, quienes vienen reportando sus informes a la Fiscalía General de la Nación, con el propósito de que esclarezca el origen de los asesinatos y aplique justicia para evitar la impunidad.

Con estos reportes, las denuncias en los despachos judiciales, las audiencias públicas, el clamor de las víctimas y los requerimientos de organismos de derechos humanos en Colombia y en el exterior, el fiscal Néstor Humberto Martínez, junto con la vicefiscal María Paulina Riveros, diseñaron la primera estrategia de priorización para la investigación y judicialización de agresiones contra defensores de derechos humanos, líderes sociales, políticos y comunales. Su aplicación se empezó a ejecutar y se mantendrá como política institucional hasta el año 2020.

Puede Leer el artículo completo aquí

 

 

Mexico: Human Rights Ombudsman shot dead in Baja California

27/11/2017

The latest wave of killings in the state of Baja California has resulted in the shooting dead of the state’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Silvestre de la Toba Camacho, and his 20 year old son Fernando, as they were driving through the city centre on the evening of Monday 20 November.

As they passed an intersection in the city centre several gunmen open fire on the Ombudsman’s car, causing it to swerve violently and crash into a building. The Ombudsman and his son were declared dead on the scene while his wife and daughter were seriously injured and taken to hospital.

In a prepared statement, national ombudsman Luis Raúl González Pérez condemned the attack on de la Toba and his family. “The CNDH [the National Human Rights Commission] reports that it has issued preventative measures in order to guarantee the safety of Mr. de la Toba’s family and that of all the staff of the state agency . . . ” said González.

Via the video link below you can access an interview with Silvestre de la Toba Camacho, from April 2017, during which he was asked about the level of violence in Baja California Sur and the killing of journalist Max Rodriguez.

The killing of De la Toba is the first assassination of a human rights ombudsman since the post was created more than 25 years ago in a bid to improve safeguards for Mexican citizens. Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, issued a statement on this latest killing.  “I condemn the killing of Silvestre de la Toba Camacho in the strongest possible terms, and am equally outraged by the assault on his family.”

“I call on the state and federal authorities to ensure that a thorough investigation is conducted and the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

In the last week alone 35 people have been killed in Baja Califormia. Most of these killings took place in La Paz and Los Cabos.  Interior Secretary Álvaro de la Peña Angulo acknowledged in a public statement that violence has indeed spiked in Baja California Sur, quoting data from the state Attorney General’s office that indicated that between May and November 2017 there were 376 homicides, 123 of which took place in October alone.

Experts cite various reasons for the rise in killings, including the chaos that has ensued as rivals battle for the turf formerly controlled by fallen drug cartel leaders such as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Several factions are said to be engaged in bloody competition for the fractured empire of the former head of the Sinaloa cartel, now jailed in New York on various charges.