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Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Mexico 1/13/2021
January 13, 2021
We wrote to officials in the state government of Chiapas and the federal government of Mexico about verbal threats of violence made against fifteen members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network in Chiapas. A group of aggressors threatened the environmentalists on December 29 while digging a ditch to help protect Maria Eugenia wetlands, a natural area of 115 hectares. A construction company is threatening the wetlands—the main source of drinking water for the área and habitat for a number of endangered species —by filling in land, paving, and building on top of the land. We are urging authorities to: 1) thoroughly and impartially investigate the verbal attacks and threats of violence against the members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice; 2) adopt measures to guarantee the physical and psychological integrity of the members of the Jovel Valley Environmental Network.
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News Article
Guatemala mine's ex-security chief convicted of Indigenous leader's murder
January 7, 2021

Sandra Cuffe in Puerto Barrios

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News Article
Guatemala: Hudbay Minerals head of security pleads guilty to killing and assaults near Guatemala mine
January 7, 2021

On January 6, 2021, the former head of security for a subsidiary of the Toronto-based mining company Hudbay Minerals officially pled guilty in a Guatemalan court to killing a local Indigenous community leader and paralyzing another Indigenous man. This could have important ramifications for two lawsuits against Hudbay underway in Ontario that centre on the Sept. 27, 2009, killing and maiming of the Indigenous men. Mynor Padilla, the former security chief of CGN, a Guatemalan nickel-mining company that was owned by Canada-based Hudbay between 2008 and 2011, pled guilty to the crimes on Dec. 17, 2020, as part of an agreement struck between Padilla and his victims, among them Angelica Choc, the widow of slain community leader Adolfo Ich Chamán, and German Chub, who was paralyzed. On Wednesday, the court accepted and ratified the guilty pleas.

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News Article
Colombia: Human Rights Update - December 2020
January 5, 2021

The year 2020 was the most violent in Colombia since the peace agreement was signed in November 2016, with widespread attacks on social activists, trade unionists and former guerrillas in the peace process. The figures released by the INDEPAZ human rights NGO make for shocking reading. During the calendar year, 309 social activists and human rights defenders were killed (totalling 1,109 since the peace agreement was signed) and 64 FARC former guerrillas were killed (249 in total). There were also 90 massacres which claimed the lives of 375 people. Additionally, state security forces killed at least 78 people.

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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 12/30/2020
December 30, 2020
We wrote once again regarding the ongling criminalization of eight environmental defenders from the community of El Guapinol in Tocoa, Colón Department, who have been imprisoned in “preventive detention” awaiting formal charges since September 2019. A petition for their release was again denied on December 18. To bring attention to several identified environmental, social, human, and economic impacts of large scale mining projects in the Atlantic zone, residents of El Guapinol and surrounding communities (including the eight who are imprisoned) organized the Encampment on the Defense of Water and Life in August 2018. They pointed to contamination of the Guapinol and San Pedro Rivers resulting from an iron ore mine. There are legitimate concerns that the mine is contaminating drinking water sources for populations across three departments in northern Honduras. These eight environmental defenders are: Ewer Alexander Cedillo Cruz, José Abelino Cedillo, Cantarero, José Daniel Márquez Márquez, Kelvin Alejandro Romero Martínez, Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, Orbin Nahúm Hernández, Arnold Javier Alemán, and Jeremías Martínez. Because of the COVID-19 health crisis, their continued imprisonment exposes them to serious risks to their lives. We are therefore urging that authorities in Honduras: 1) immediately release them from preventive detention; 2) condemn the misuse of criminal law to control, neutralize and punish people who exercise the right to organize resistance in defense of land and waterways
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News Article
Indigenous environmental defender killed in latest Honduras attack
December 29, 2020

Nina Lakhani

Another indigenous environmentalist has been killed in Honduras, cementing the country’s inglorious ranking as the deadliest place in the world to defend land and natural resources from exploitation.

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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 12/29/2020
December 29, 2020
We are demanding an investigation into the assassination of Lenca indigenous leader Félix Vásquez at his home in La Paz Department on December 26. Four armed men in balaclavas entered his home and shot him in front of his adult children. Félix Vásquez was well-known nationally for his work in defense of indigenous land rights (since the 1980s) and for organizing opposition to environmentally destructive megaprojects such as mines, hydroelectric dams, wind farms and logging, as well as for helping dispossessed communities recover ancestral land titles. He was the Secretary General of the Union of Rural Workers (UTC) in La Paz. He was also a pre-candidate for Congress for the Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE) party.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Colombia, 12/22/2020
December 22, 2020
We are deeply concerned for the safety of environmental defenders. We are aware of two assassinations (November 30) and ongoing death threats to another. Assassinations: Meta Department: Javier Francisco Parra Cubillos was a 47-year-old environmentalist who worked as coordinator of CORMACARENA (Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the Special Management Area of La Macarena). Chocó Department: Harlin David Rivas Ospina was a student of environmental engineering at the Technological University of Chocó and environmental activist in the National Youth Environment Network. Death threats: Santander Department: Nini Johana Cárdenas Rueda is an environmental defender in Carmen de Chucurí in Santander Department who is active in the Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking and Movimiento Nacional Ambiental. Because of her work denouncing illegal extractive projects, she has been the victim of death threats, surveillance, and physical attacks for the past few years.
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News Article
NicaNotes: Infrastructure Advances Improve Lives of All Nicaraguans
December 17, 2020

By Nan McCurdy

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News Article
Honduran Supreme Court rules against Aura Minerals (MINOSA) illegal grave digging & destruction of Azacualpa cemetery
December 1, 2020

The Bufete de Estudios para la Dignidad, in conjunction with the Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y la Justicia, MADJ, makes public the sentence resolution issued by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), in which the CSJ orders the municipal government of La Union, Copan and the Ministry of Health to reject any authorization of exhumations in the Cemetery of San Andres (Azacualpa) carried out by Aura Minerals (MINOSA).The ruling restores the right to self-determination of peoples, personal integrity, culture and the right to protection of the family. It constitutes a precedent that vindicates and strengthens community struggles and the exercise of sovereignty against the abuses and violations of rights by companies and, in general, by the extractive model in Honduras.

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