IRTF News

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. How long? This time, 30 years. Col. Montano led an elite U.S.-trained army unit that massacred six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter during El Salvador's 12-year civil war. More than 70,000 men, women, and children died during the Salvadoran Civil War. One-million refugees (20% of the country’s population!) fled seeking safety, most of them to the US. The Salvadoran Truth Commission investigation concluded that 85% of the more than 22,000 atrocities that were reported during the war were committed by the U.S.-backed military regime and associated forces. And what was does the US government say now in hindsight? “One of fabulous achievement” is how Elliott Abrams, the Reagan administration’s "death squad ambassador" in Central America, has hailed the US record in El Salvador. Today, Elliott Abrams works as the Trump administration's special representative for Iran and Venezuela.

At least 212 land and environmental defenders were murdered last year — the highest number since the group Global Witness began gathering data eight years ago. Some 40% of those killed were Indigenous peoples. Today on Democracy Now!, we get an update from Honduras, where the Afro-Indigenous Garífuna community continues to demand the safe return of five Garífuna land defenders who were kidnapped by heavily armed men who were reportedly wearing police uniforms and forced them into three unmarked vehicles at gunpoint. This was the latest attack against the Garífuna community as they defend their territory from destructive projects fueled by foreign investors and the Honduran government. “We are in danger daily — all the leaders of the Garífuna community, all the defendants of the land in Honduras,” says Carla García, international relations coordinator at the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFANEH).

Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio (OH-09) is among 28 US House members who signed a letter (authored by Rep. Ilan Omar) opposing US investment in large-scale development projects in Honduras that are surrounded by serious human rights, worker rights, and environmental concerns. In their letter to Adam Boehler, chief executive officer of the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the US representatives call the DFC’s planned investment in Honduras “a grave mistake.” They find it “deeply alarming” that Boehler (along with the US Embassy’s chargé d'affaires and the National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere) posed for a photograph with President Hernández and announced “an investment in the same region of the country where …disappearances – and years of human rights violations – have taken place.” They make astute criticisms of both the president of Honduras and the energy company behind the Jimalito River hydropower project. “President Juan Orlando Hernández has a record that includes gross human rights violations, credible accusations of electoral fraud, deep connections to narcotrafficking and organized crime, and corruption.” “The company in charge of the project, Inversiones de Generación Eléctricas, S.A. (“Ingelsa”), is credibly accused by local community leaders of corruption, intimidation, and violence [and] the river that is being dammed is the only source of clean drinking water for the communities in the area.” They further note that community members active in organized resistance against the hydropower project have been assassinated, including the young lawyer Carlos Hernández in 2018.