Ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro, who leads in opinion polls ahead of Colombian elections next month, signed an oath Tuesday not to expropriate property if he becomes the country's first-ever leftist president. "My proposal of transformation for this country is not grounded in, and does not include, any kind of expropriation," the 61-year-old senator told reporters.
Border Patrol car chases have been the subject of increasing scrutiny in recent months, amid a spike in deadly crashes, an increase in vehicular use-of-force incidents, and newly released information about U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s controversial Critical Incident Teams. Immigrant advocates and federal lawmakers are raising alarms about how the agency defines what counts as a pursuit, how those pursuits are carried out and how they are investigated when things go badly. U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D- El Paso, recently joined other lawmakers in raising questions about Border Patrol pursuits. She signed a joint letter to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus on April 4 calling for the agency to curtail the use of vehicle pursuits, update their vehicle pursuit policy and improve agency oversight.
On March 22, Julio Toc Mucu was apprehended by police near his home and taken to the Penitentiary Center in Puerto Barrios, where he was beaten in custody. We understand that arrest warrants have also been issued against 12 more environmental defenders and journalists who protested the mine in October 2021 when state security forces violently attacked community residents with beatings and tear gas.
We reiterate our condemnation of acts of state violence against, and criminalization of, Indigenous environmental rights defenders in El Estor. We strongly urge the government of Guatemala to: (1) drop all criminal charges against Julio Toc Mucu and the other environmental defenders, (2) suspend the company’s mining license and stop all further mining operations promptly, and (3) initiate a new, transparent and thorough and inclusive consultation process with impacted communities.
On March 15 in Tegucigalpa, lawyer and member of the LGBTQ+ organization SOMOS-CDC (Centro para el Desarollo y la Cooperación LGBTI) Roger Mariano Silva Carbajal was threatened by an armed man on a motorcycle who held a gun in his hand and stole his computer containing information pertaining to that group. This event occureed just one day before Roger Mariano Silva Carbajal was to serve as a panelist on the Inter-American human Rights Commission convocation to talk about the problematic situation of LGBTQ+ persons in Honduras. This is not the first time SOMOS-CDC has been the target of attacks, in spite of having requested the implementation of protective orders in August 2021 to protect the lives of LGBTQ+ human rights defenders.
On Sunday, March 27, just hours after congress approved a state of emergency, heavily armed police and soldiers entered the packed, gang-controlled neighborhood of San Jose El Pino. Freed from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer, they went door to door, dragging out young men. President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighborhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicized roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism.”
We continue to be deeply concerned for leaders of the LGBTQ+ community. On March 17, Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández, the current representative of the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia to the Central Committee of Artists of the National Dance Council, was found dead at his workplace, his body showing signs of torture. He was an LGBTIQ+ activist on San Andrés Island, located 470 miles north of the Colombian mainland. Just three days prior, another musician, Fabián Pérez Hooker, was killed at his home, also on San Andrés Island. Many musicians and other artists are involved in defense of environmental, cultural and social rights, and do work against violence and drugs. The killing of two artists on the same island in a matter of days is greatly troubling. Luis Carlos Bustamante Fernández became the 42nd human rights defender assassinated in 2022. There have been 1,328 social leaders killed since the signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016.
The Garífuna community of San Juan and Tornabé, in the city of Tela, Honduras, asked the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to condemn the State for the dispossession, the lack of protection of their ancestral territories and the threat to their leaders. "The territory is important for the community, it is our home, everything that is inside: the lake, the sea, the land. They don't listen to us. Steps were taken but they have not been resolved by the State". During the public and virtual hearing of the IACHR Court, held at the beginning of April, the testimonies presented coincided in the demand that the State should be granted collective property titles and that all of their ancestral lands and territories should be recognized.
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who governed from 2014 to January this year, was arrested at his home in Tegucigalpa in February. He is accused of having been involved in a drug-trafficking ring which included his younger brother Tony Hernández, who last year was sentenced in the US to life in prison. Security Minister Ramón Sabillón said that "the extradition will happen next week (....) sometime between Wednesday and Friday".
A three-day weekend of extreme gang violence in El Salvador, March 25 to March 27, ended with 87 people dead. The government of President Nayib Bukele responded by declaring a state of emergency on March 27, suspending various civil liberties for 30 days and expanding the armed forces’ enforcement powers. Civil liberties suspended by the emergency declaration include freedom of association, the right to legal counsel in case of detention and the right to remain silent if arrested. The emergency declaration allows the government to arrest citizens for 15 days without charging them, listen to private communications without a warrant and detain anyone suspected of belonging to a gang. The government also announced new restrictions in prisons that included limiting meals to two per day, locking inmates in their cells 24/7 and removing sleeping mats as a type of collective punishment.
The United Nations’s human rights body has urged Colombia to prosecute those responsible for a military raid that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including four civilians that community members say were passed off as fighters. The Colombian military said last month that it had carried out an operation against Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents involved in drug trafficking. But human rights groups have reported that there were four civilians among the dead. The UN urged authorities to protect witnesses and journalists that have been threatened in recent days over their reports.
