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Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

RRN Case Update
RRN Case Update: January 2022
January 31, 2022
January 2022 - RRN Letters Summary
Please see below a summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: -protect people living under threat -demand investigations into human rights crimes -bring human rights criminals to justice IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
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News Article
Anti-Militarism: How US military training empowered Berta Caceres' killers in Honduras
January 30, 2022

U.S. military training bestows prestige and power on its recipients when they return to their home militaries. After graduating from West Point Military Academy, Roberto David Castillo became an officer in the Honduran military and used his military and government positions to directly benefit his corporate pursuits. When Castillo and the criminal structure he was a part of could not silence environmental activist Berta Cáceres through intimidation, criminal charges, or bribery, he used his military skills to coordinate her murder. The issue is not only what is being taught to the graduates of West Point, but the fact that a prestigious U.S. military education bestows significant power and prestige on elites from Central America and other countries, without any accountability for what they use that power and prestige to do.

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News Article
Environmental Human Rights: Wrongfully Evicted Cooperative Landowners in Honduras Regain their Lands/ UUSC celebra su regreso a casa
January 28, 2022

More than a month after being forcibly and unlawfully evicted, campesino landowners in the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras regained possession of their lands. This is only the latest in repeated attacks on rightfully held land at the hands of corrupt judicial authorities working in the interests of large agribusiness and mining companies. That the campesino landowners will now be able to return home, is a huge victory. The recent election of Xiomara Castro has given many of our partners and Honduran society reason for hope as a step towards accountability and real democratic change for the first time in the years since the 2009 coup. However, President Castro is already facing significant challenges and political conflict within her own party.

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News Article
Afro-descendant & Indigenous Solidarity: Guatemala convicts ex-soldiers for raping indigenous women
January 25, 2022

Guatemala's highest court has sentenced five former paramilitaries to 30 years in prison for raping dozens of indigenous Mayan women during the country's civil war in the 1980s. The men were members of so-called Civil Self-Defense Patrols, armed groups formed and supported by the military. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala said the sentence was a "landmark advance in the access to the rights to truth, justice and reparation for female victims of sexual violence during" the war.

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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 1/25/2022
January 25, 2022
During the final weeks of President Hernández’s term, Miami-based Aura Minerals seemed eager to move full steam ahead with its desecration of a 200-year-old Maya Chortí cemetery in Azacualpa. The military and National Police were deployed to facilitate Aura’s exhumation of graves so that they can get their hands on gold reserves underneath. Community residents trying to protect their deceased relatives’ final resting place are threatened, detained, and beaten. We echo the demands of the residents of Azacualpa to (1) order a suspension of the exhumations of graves in the cemetery, (2) order a retreat of the military and police from the cemetery hill, and (3) reassure the community’s access to the cemetery.
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News Article
Honduras: Combating Narcos or Criminalizing Indigeneity?
January 13, 2022
On September 16, 2021, a military helicopter appeared and began firing—seemingly indiscriminately—from above. The unsuspecting residents of Ibans, a small Afro-Indigenous community on the northeastern coast of Honduras, ran for cover from the stream of bullets raining down. The authorities, including DEA, initially tried to cover up the Ahuas incident and subsequently to justify it as a matter of security: they alleged that the commercial passenger boat was involved in trafficking drugs and that it opened fire on the military helicopter. Illicit drugs do transit parts of this region in Honduras, and much of the rest of it. In fact, since the Ahuas massacre, cocaine transit through the region has remained, on average, unchanged despite ongoing U.S.-funded enforcement. In this context, these extrajudicial killings have come to represent an ongoing counter-narcotics operation that serves not to stop illegal drug trafficking, but rather to perpetuate violence and impunity through the militarization of Indigenous territories in Honduras. The cost of this overzealous response and intentional neglect can be seen in the lives of Miskitu, Tawhaka, Garifuna, and other Indigenous Peoples.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Colombia, 1/13/2022
January 13, 2022
We expressed deep concern to officials in Colombia about the lack of government response to the paramilitary invasion of campesino townships and villages in the South of Bolívar which began during the last week of December, despite a large presence of the Colombian Armed Forces. The Armed Forces are allowing paramilitaries to take control. We are worried that massive displacement of villagers might result. We are urging authorities in Colombia to (1) consult with local leadership in the Montecristo region to devise a plan to project the local population from further violence and displacement by paramilitary forces, (2) reevaluate the mission the Colombian Armed Forces in the region, and (3) take decisive actions to dismantle paramilitary groups that are operating in the South of Bolívar.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Colombia, 1/11/2022
January 11, 2022
The National Police and its Anti-Riot Mobile Squad (ESMAD) carried out brutal repression against residents who are protesting against fare increases in Bogota’s TransMilenio transportation system. On January 5, ESMAD agents arrived with two military tanks at the Molinos neighbhorhood of Bogotá. They threw stun grenades at demonstrators and fired tear gas indiscriminately. ESMAD detained a young journalist and kicked him. As many as 2,500 National Police and ESMAD officers were deployed around the city on January 11, when the fare increase went into effect. Many demonstrators have been arrested.
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News Article
Anti-Militarism: 21st Century US Coups and Attempted Coups in Latin America
January 6, 2022
US organized coups in Latin American countries is hardly a 20th century phenomenon. However, this century the US rulers have turned to a new coup strategy, relying on soft coups, a significant change from the notoriously brutal military hard coups in the 1970s. One central US concern in these new coups has been to maintain a legal and democratic facade as much as possible. US regime change operations have found three mechanisms this century that have been tremendously successful: economic warfare on a country, increasing the use of corporate media and social media, and lastly, lawfare. Here is a list of US Backed Coups and Attempted Coups in the 21st Century.
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News Article
Colombia: Review of the Year 2021 - FOR Peace Presence
January 5, 2022

Review of the Year 2021 The past year was a challenging year for FOR Peace Presence and Colombia. Let's look back on the year together.

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