source: Cross Border Network
article by Judy Ancel
Construction workers say that B.L. Harbert Construction, an Alabama-based favorite of the State Department for many overseas projects, has repeatedly broken Honduran labor law by pushing illegal temporary contracts on the workers and failing to provide medical care or compensation to injured workers or to discipline racist supervisors.
As the Colombian government transitions from the right wing conservative Iván Duque to the leftist Gustavo Petro, the violence and crime holds on.
WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America), has received reports of a multitude of cases of human rights violations including shootings, assassinations displacements and death threats. On the 12th of September an armed conflict broke out in the Afro-Colombian community in the town of San Miguel, displacing 100s of families, causing power outages and lockdowns. The Afro-Colombian General Community Council of San Juan (Consejo Comunitario General de San Juan, ACADESAN) calls on the State to defend the human rights of the community and urges the armed groups to respect human rights and laws.
Only 2 days earlier, a hitman killed the secretary of administrative affairs of the Oil Workers Union (Unión Sindical Obrera, USO) Sibares Lamprea Vargas in a drive by shooting. The Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo) issued an Early Warning Alert, indicating that trade unionists belonging to the USO face danger due to their activities. USO members are frequent targets of death threats intimidation and sabotage in their workplace.
On September 9th, in Surcre, the female social leader Eva Amaya Vidal was killed in her home. Vidal participated in Sucre government innovation programms and was an example of leadership for other women. An early alert was issued stating that female social leaders are often targets based on their gender.
The The Afro-Colombian Peace Council (Consejo Nacional de Paz de Afro-Colombianos, CONPA) reports that between July 27 and August 7, 957 male and female leaders as well as human rights activists were assasinatied, 261 signers of the peace accords were killed, and 1,192 people were killed in 313 massacres. Furthermore, the CONPA reports 2,366 death threats, 555 kidnappings and 178 early warnings. CONPA urges the government to declare a state of humanitarian emergency and to seek politically negotiated solutions to the conflicts.
A full list of the WOLA reports can be found in the article below.
We wrote to the attorney general of Honduras, urging that the Public Ministry drop criminal investigations against Garífuna community leaders Miriam Miranda (General Coordinator of OFRANEH, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras), Dr. Luther Castillo (an OFRANEH member who is the current government’s Minister of Science and Technology), and Edy Tábora (a lawyer for OFRANEH and board member of SUNLA, the Committee for the Search and Investigation of the Disappeared of Triunfo de la Cruz).
On August 9 (Indigenous Peoples’ Day), members of OFRANEH and other Indigenous, territorial, and human rights organizations held a peaceful protest inside and outside the offices of the Public Ministry in Tegucigalpa. They demanded that the Public Ministry hear their legitimate concerns about the lack of prompt and effective justice in the case of the July 2022 forced disappearance of four young Garífuna men in the community of Triunfo de la Cruz, Atlántida Department. Instead of investigating, prosecuting and punishing those responsible for the forced disappearance of the four men, it appears that the Public Ministry is abusing its authority by ordering criminal investigations of OFRANEH leaders.
We wrote to the director of the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations at the US State Department because its US-based contractor working in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is routinely violating labor rights of construction workers at the new US Embassy. We urge Overseas Buildings Operations to intervene. We expect the US government to uphold the same labor standards in foreign construction as required to be upheld domestically.
About two-thirds of the 1100 construction workers employed by Alabama-based B.L. Harbert International have been on strike intermittently since early July. Workers report that the temporary contracts imposed on them by the company cover some but not all of the legally mandated benefits, such as protections against and medical coverage for on-the-job injuries. Workplace accidents, including severed fingers, have occurred. Some injured workers have been fired. If workers miss a day of work, they are routinely fired. These conditions, in addition to frequent racist comments from supervisors, have poisoned any trust the workers had in B.L. Harbert or the U.S. government.
Since the Biden administration restarted the Central American Minors Refugee and Parole Program (CAM program), initionaly initiated by the Obama administration and later withdrawn by Trump, not much has happened.
Underfunding and personal shortage at the nine national resettlement agencies led to the inability to handle the mass of applications.
Due to this bottleneck only a few hundred cases filed before the Trump administration ended the program have been completed since March 2021.
For many children this slow processing of applications means waiting times of over a year and no information on how long it will take until they are reunited with their familes.
Organizations are now calling for the support of consuls to help the children with their application interviews and pass case information on to the waiting parents or guardians.
On September 17, the New York Times published an article by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Jody García including misinformation and false claims about the US government's efforts to support democracy in Central America.
The article claims that the Biden administration is working to end corruption and impunity in Guatemala, while being inactive as the military backed government “methodically dismantled the last vestiges of independent institutions." The US is supporting this illegitimate government, referring to the Guatemalan ruling class as "democratic allies."
Besides this, Biden lied about stopping the sanctions against Nicaragua, which the U.S. and many "western" countries have been using since the 1980's to squeeze its economy and cause political change.
The article also states that the U.S. aided the return to democracy in Honduras. In fact, the U.S. has always held mutually beneficial relations to the Honduran government which came to power by an U.S. backed coup.
Once again a North American company seeks to rob Guatemala of its natural resources.
Under heavy protest, the Canadian mining corporation Bluestone Resources is going forward with the open-pit mining operation Cerro Blanco in Asunción Mita, in the department of Jutiapa.
Knowing this new gold mine would cause irreparable damages to the surface and subterranean water flows risking the water security of millions, the community called in a Municipal Consultation of Neighbors, a legally binding state tool that lets local residents make decisions about their territory.
On September 18, the Mitecos and Mitecas residents, after strong backlash from Bluestone Resources, went to the polls to vote on the future of their homes. The outcome was clear. 87% of the voters opposed Bluestone's mining plan, yet the company had an ace up their sleeve.
Following the democratic decision, the corporation turned to the corrupt government of Guatemala.
Only a day later, on September 19 the Ministry of Energy and Mining (MEM) rejected the Municipal Consultation of Neighbors' vote, stating that the Municipal government of Asunción Mita does not have the authority to make that decision.
It is not the first time, that the MEM has acted as a private attorney for the big mining corporation.
More on MEM's and the government's involvement in illegal mining in the following article.
On September 2., The Committee of Family Members of Political Prisoners of El Salvador held a press conference announcing the delivery of letters to the Attorney General, Human Rights Ombudsman and the Supreme Court.
The letters signed by nearly 1.000 people and over 70 Organizations demand the release of political prisoners and the reinstatement of constitutional rights in the country.
Following emergency measures suspending constitutional rights, over 50.000 people were arrested without warrants leading to at least 70 deaths in custody.
Even though the prisoners remain in custody, the international media coverage and outcall to the Attorney General, Human Rights Ombudsman and Supreme Court is a big leap towards change.
In his meeting with the United Nations Secretary Antonio Guterres, Colombia's president Gustavo Petro stated his goal to achieve total peace in his country, by restructuring the crime fighting strategy within Latin America.
Following his visit to the United Nations, Petro held a speech in Queens, stressing the difficulties Columbian emigrants are facing in the United States.
David Morales, lawyer, former prosecutor and one of the most outspoken critics of El Salvador's Bukele government.
The lawyer who will receive this year's Human Rights Award from WOLA (Washington Office on Latin America) has worked as a human rights activist for years, criticizing El Salvador's judicial system.
His career started in 1990 as an investigator at the Legal Protection Office of the Archbishop of San Salvador where he focused on the massacres of Rio Sumpul and El Mozote which occurred during the 1980's Salvadoran civil war.
In 1995 Morales left the Legal Protection Office and transferred to the PDDH (Procurador para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos), a 1992 created institution that exercised the most supervision over the first complaints of abuses that arose against the new National Civil Police (PNC) and the Attorneys General's Office.
From 2013 on, he worked as an Ombudsman, taking lead in the investigation of extermination groups in the PNC.
The following article summerizes Morales' work and analyzes the human rights violations in El Salvador.
