Rapid Response Network

In the early hours of the morning of November 14, officers of the National Police in Comayagüela, Francisco Morazán Department, arbitrarily stopped a vehicle, arrested the occupants, and beat one of them to the point where she had to be stitched up at the hospital. The victims: Lucía Enamorado, a local leader of the National Network of Human Rights Defenders, her partner Junior Oyuela, and journalist Nancy Paola García, a columnist for the feminist publication Tinta Verde. With understandable worry after being stopped, Junior Oyuela expressed verbal concern that “the police in Honduras disappeared people.” The police arrested him. When Lucía Enamorado questioned why they were being detained, the police took her into the patrol car and beat her. She had to be taken to a hospital to receive stitches for her wounds. Despite her injuries, they held her in detention for several hours in the Fourth District Police Station in the Belén neighborhood of Comayagüela. They were released at 12:00pm after a social media campaign that pressured the National Police.

Human rights defender Adriana Lizarazo, the coordinator of the Santander chapter of the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP), is receiving death threats from paramilitaries. The text messages sent to Adriana Lizarazo on November 13 indicated that the sender was with the Gaitanistas/Gulf Clan paramilitary organization and that they had private information about her. The sender insisted on meeting with her. CSPP was also singled out as a military target. The sender included photos of firearms and someone dressed in military gear with a military rope and a bracelet with the initials AGC. The threats to Adriana Lizarazo, her family, and members of CSPP-Santander are of great concern. INDEPAZ (Institute for the Study of Development and Peace) reports that from January 1 through November 15 of this year, there have been 152 documented acts of aggression against social leaders in Colombia.

We wrote to officials in Colombia about the attack on oil pipeline protesters that resulted in the shooting death of 31-year-old farmer Michelsen Vargas Velasco by ESMAD anti-riot police on November 13. Residents of La Hermosura (Bolívar municipality, Santander Dept) had been protesting against an ECOPETROL oil pipeline for the past 50 days because of water contamination and destruction to their roads. On November 13, they blocked access to a road in Puerto de los Cerros. ESMAD arrived and attacked the community, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. They shot Michelsen Vargas Velasco in the head at close range.

We wrote to officials in Honduras to protest the police and military attack on two young adults in the community of Llano Largo in San José municipality, La Paz Department, on November 10. Ronald Alexander Gutiérrez Molina and Saúl Ramos were injured by the security agents. Ronald, age 24, is a community leader who organizes a youth soccer team and participates in a dance team. The security agents approached him on the street at 10:30pm and demanded that he direct them to gang members in the area. When he denied knowing anything about gang members, they grabbed, detained, beat, and shot him. (He has a gunshot wound on his right ankle.) They sprayed a toxic gas on his face and threatened to kill him.

Two campesino leaders, Celenia Bonilla and her husband Nelson García, were assassinated on November 21. They were attacked while gardening on the patio of their home in the Cañada de Flores sector of Guaimaca municipality, Francisco Morazán Department. Their three children (the youngest one-year-old) are now left orphaned. Nelson García was president of the campesino association Hombres y Mujeres de Fé (Men and Women of Faith). Together with another campesino association, 44 families have been farming the land in Cañada de Flores for ten years against a backdrop of persecution. Although the municipality of Guaimaca has the land registered as an ejido (common land), an individual has been claiming private ownership. The CNTC (National Center of Rural Workers) has previously denounced threats and harassment of members of these two campesino associations. We demand that the government investigate these killings and bring the perpetrators to justice. We also urge the government to develop public policies on access to and tenure of land in order to address the structural issues of land conflicts.

We wrote to the attorney general of Guatemala for the second day in a row about more state violence in El Estor. On November 16 the Guatemalan National Police (PNC) forcibly evicted 96 Maya Q’eqchi’ families from Chinebal, in the southern region of El Estor municipality, Izabal Department, which has been under a government-declared state of siege since October 23. The Maya Q’eqchi’ families of Chinebal have resided and farmed on this land at the foot of the Sierra de las Minas mountain range since the 1940s. The eviction (police bulldozing homes, burning families’ personal belongings) stemmed from a longstanding land dispute over rightful ownership of the Palestina Chinebal farm. Businessman Juan Maegeli leases portions of the land to the NaturAceites company to grow African palm trees for palm oil production. Palm plantations are now covering 9% of arable land in Izabal.

In our letter to the attorney general of Guatemalan, we joined the voices of our RRN members with organizations from around the world to denounce the state of siege declared by the government of Guatemala and repression carried out against the local indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ community in El Estor, Izabal Department. Since October 4, residents have been organizing a highway blockade to prevent the passage of machinery on its way to the El Fénix nickel mine, which has been operating illegally since 2005. Police have implemented tactics of intimidation and repression over the past several weeks. Local residents—along with journalists reporting on the protests—have been tear-gassed, beaten and threatened by the excessive number of agents of the National Police and military deployed to the area. Police are enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew. Roads in and out of El Estor are controlled by military road-blocks. Lake Izabal is patrolled by naval boats. Drones are flown to monitor neighborhoods and movement of local residents. Tear gas is fired not only at demonstrators but into people’s homes. Some indigenous leaders and journalists have been arrested. Security agents have also been confiscating cellular phones of the residents and journalists to prevent documentation of the events.Both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have denounced the state of siege, but the violence continues.

We wrote to officials in Colombia about threats to and attacks on indigenous Awá and Nasa community members and leaders in Nariño and Cauca Departments, including the attempted assassination of Nasa community leader Oveimar Tenorio. Nariño Department (Awá territory) : On October 2, at least three Awá women indigenous leaders in Barbacoas municipality received threatening phone calls, including Yurani López Moreano, governor of the Awá Nunalbí Alto Ulbíl Reservation. They were threatened to either leave their territory or risk becoming a military target....Cauca Department (Nasa territories): On October 1, Oveimar Tenorio, area coordinator of the Kiwe Thenas of Cxhab Wala Kiwe, was shot repeatedly at his home at the Nasa reservation of San Francisco de Toribío. Fortunatley, he survived the assassination attempt.... On October 3, four Nasa community members were kidnapped, gagged and threatened with death by armed men. Gun shots were fired against members of the Indigenous Guard as they made a successful rescue of the four people at the town hall in Caloto municipality....We demand investigations into these threats and attacks. We further demand that the State protect the right of indigenous communities to defend their communal territories and maintain them as conflict-free zones.

María Steffania Muñoz Villa became the 10th female ex-combatant and signer of the Peace Accords killed when she was attacked in the village of Mazamorrero, outside of Buenos Aires municipality, in Cauca Department. María Steffania Muñoz Villa was a member of the Territorial Space for Reincorporation [of ex-combatants] (ETCR) in Buenos Aires. Her partner (also an ex-combatant) Yorbis Valencia Carabali was also killed on the outskirts of Buenos Aires on July 25. INDEPAZ reports that several armed groups operate in the region, including AGC (Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces), ELN (National Liberation Army), and a residual faction of the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army). At least 289 ex-combatants have been assassinated since the signing of the Peace Accords in November 2016. In this letter, we also ask for investigations into the killings of four other social leaders across the country: Marco Tulio Gutiérrez Mendoza, Dilio Bailarín, Efren Bailarín Carupia, and Erley Osorio Arias. We urge that the state take action to dismantle paramilitary structures that operate in several regions of the country, threatening and controlling local communities.

We wrote to officials in Honduras expressing our outrage about violence waged against three LGBTI leaders in three areas of the country: Erika Tatiana Martínez García, who was murdered in her home on September 26 (Copán Department), Fausto Vásquez, whose bed was set on fire on September 30 (La Paz Department), and Victoria Rodríguez, who was beaten in her home on October 7 (Comayagua Department). LGBTI rights groups report that 390 LGBTI people have been murdered in Honduras in the past 12 years, including 17 this year. In only nine percent of the cases has there been a murder conviction; more than 90 percent of the cases remain in impunity. Tatiana's murder, Fausto’s harassment, and Vicky’s attack must all be seen as transgressions against protections that human rights defenders should receive. The government of Honduras should adhere to the ruling handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (June 28, 2021) when it found the State responsible for the murder of transwoman Vicky Hernández on June 28, 2009. There must be accountability and an end to the impunity provided to the perpetrators of these crimes.