IRTF News

After the recent bond hearing concluded, the Guapinol water defenders were told that the court would rule on whether or not to release them within 24 hours, which is what the Criminal Procedural Code establishes. The family members of the defenders didn't wait for the ruling outside the court. They traveled by busloads more than an hour away to the jail in Olanchito to be near their loved ones, awaiting the decision. Late that night, after no news and after the Court clearly passed the established time to deliver its ruling, the families returned home. The following day, with still no news, they made another hour-long trip to the court in Trujillo. Outside, entire families and their communities congregated peacefully, under police watch. They shared food, chanted, and used the time to denounce the environmental destruction being caused by illegal mining in the Carlos Escaleras National Park by the Grupo Emco open-pit iron oxide mining project. They held posters and banners of their loved ones, hoping they would be finally freed after 26 months of detention deemed arbitrary by the UN.

The United States is a contradiction. From the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution to the Statue of Liberty beckoning the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the U.S. trumpets to the world – and does not hesitate to export at gunpoint – the ideals of democracy, freedom, and unbridled capitalism; yet, it is a nation that is also based upon the murderous oppression of Black, Indigenous and other peoples of color. The United States was born of Indigenous genocide and settler colonialism, and African slavery, which included genocide and extractive colonialism, all driven by capitalism and the desire to exploit every natural and human resource for the fulfillment of greed and hegemony. These are not historical issues which have been overcome; they exist today in other no less deadly forms than their earlier iterations.  

In 2017, a red slick spread over Lake Izabal, which the community blamed on pollution from a nickel mine, owned by Switzerland-based Solway Investments. In resulting protests, Cristobal Pop, 44, a fisherman was imprisoned, and his comrade Carlos Maaz shot dead. This month, the community of El Estor in Izabal Department resumed demonstrations, accusing CGN (the domestic subsidiary of Solway) of continuing to mine at El Fénix despite a 2019 Constitutional Court order for it to suspend operations. The court ruled in favor of local communities, who said they had not been consulted about the opening of the mine or its effects on them. The government was ordered to open fresh consultations, but the people of El Estor say they are being excluded.

In July 2021, the head of the Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity in Guatemala was removed from his position. Subsequently, after fleeing the country for fear of further reprisals, Juan Francisco Sandoval stated that he had gathered evidence showing that President Alejandro Giammattei had received bribes in January from one of the companies involved in the controversial Fénix nickel mining project in El Estor (a mining project ruled illegal by a Guatemalan court in 2019 , but nevertheless continues to operate) and that for this reason he was being persecuted by the State. On October 28, Juan Francisco Sandoval was among the current and former judicial employees of Guatemala who offered testimony to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The Washington-based Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA (GHRC) provided logistical support for the hearing, which focused on judicial independence in Guatemala. Various human rights organizations, including GHRC, had requested the hearing. Conclusion: citing 189 attacks and 51 legal proceedings against judicial officials, IACHR warned that complaints against judges, prosecutors, and human rights defenders reveal a context of weakening judicial independence in Guatemala. Commissioner Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño explained the importance of an independent justice system, stating, “There is no rule of law if there is no judicial independence.”