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IRTF News
RRN Letter
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.
News Article
January 11, 2022
According to the International Labour Organization there are more than 40 million victims of human trafficking and forced labor around the world today, including children. This is a hard truth that the Fair Trade movement is fighting to change.
News Article
January 10, 2022
Senate Democrats in Washington on Monday asked the Biden administration to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) be extended to migrants of four Central American countries from where most are migrating to the U.S. Southwest border. The request was made to re-designate TPS for migrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The senators cited worsening humanitarian conditions across Central America, as well as rising coronavirus cases and multiple natural disasters.
News Article
January 10, 2022
Women have been at the forefront of struggle in Honduras throughout its history, from fighting dictatorships to challenging political corruption to seeking civil improvements such as gender parity in politics and education. The recent presidential election of Xiomara Castro Sarmiento Zelaya of the Libertad and Refundación (Libre) party has exhilarated women from various sectors and in the diaspora. And as the first woman president, In her campaign and platform, Castro embraced gender rights and sought to address femicides and structural violence against women and LGBTI communities—issues ignored in previous campaigns. But the most far-reaching policy for women is Castro’s support of the right to sexual and reproductive rights. Now, 67 years after women won the right to vote, Xiomara Castro is promising to be a president of the people and to restore Honduras’s constitutionality and rule of law. It promises to be a new era for women, of all races and ethnicities, and LGBTI communities.
News Article
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.
News Article
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.
News Article
January 3, 2022
LUNES, 03 ENERO 2022 12:48
Los defensores ambientales de la comunidad de Guapinol se han enfrentado con una serie pesada de injusticias desde el momento que su río se convirtió en lodo en 2018 durante la construcción de una mina cercana.
News Article
January 3, 2022
The "Remain in Mexico" program, first implemented by the Trump administration in 2019, was halted after President Biden took office. A federal judge ordered the program, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, to be reimplemented after Texas and Missouri sued over the way the policy ended. The Biden administration has defended the restart as something it was forced to do. Nicaraguans have been the largest group returned under the beginning of the reboot. Asylum seekers from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and Ecuador have also been sent back under MPP. Many details about the program’s logistics remain unclear.
News Article
December 23, 2021
In Aguán, groups like Juan Moncada’s, a murdered cooperative farmer, have dwindled, mostly because of migration. Once boasting 248 families, the cooperative is now half that size. Those who remain are intensifying efforts to reclaim land, occupying disputed palm plantations and stepping up campaigns to authenticate titles they say prove ownership of some plots. Moncada's murder is part of a free-for-all in northern Honduras that pits peasants, landowners, public and private security forces, criminal gangs and government officials against one another. Decades in the making, the conflict is a growing source of bloodshed and a record tide of migration by people seeking to flee land grabs, violence, poverty, and the widespread corruption and impunity that fuel them.
News Article
December 21, 2021
The National Roundtable against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, a coalition of environmental and social movement organizations, universities, water justice activists, faith communities, human rights defenders, and others, issued a warning last week regarding the intention of the Bukele administration to permit metal mining in El Salvador, reversing the ban passed unanimously in 2017. As background, in 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a total ban on metal mining. The historic legislation was the achievement of over a decade of community organizing and education, led principally by rural women, and came at the cost of violent harassment, threats, and even the assassination of community leaders involved in the struggle. Four years later, under the Bukele administration, environmental and social movement organizations are again on alert over the possible return of metal mining in El Salvador. “We are not being alarmists," said Omar Serrano from the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA). "There are signs indicating that [the administration] is thinking of returning to mining, even if they do not say so publicly.”