IRTF News

A three-day weekend of extreme gang violence in El Salvador, March 25 to March 27, ended with 87 people dead. The government of President Nayib Bukele responded by declaring a state of emergency on March 27, suspending various civil liberties for 30 days and expanding the armed forces’ enforcement powers. Civil liberties suspended by the emergency declaration include freedom of association, the right to legal counsel in case of detention and the right to remain silent if arrested. The emergency declaration allows the government to arrest citizens for 15 days without charging them, listen to private communications without a warrant and detain anyone suspected of belonging to a gang. The government also announced new restrictions in prisons that included limiting meals to two per day, locking inmates in their cells 24/7 and removing sleeping mats as a type of collective punishment.

Countries in Latin America came under particularly harsh criticism in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, with allies such as Mexico and adversaries including Nicaragua facing similar opprobrium. The report zeroed in on many of the widely denounced human rights abuses, including the killing of journalists, discrimination against LGBTQ people, targeted murders of women, and widespread violence fueled by drug traffickers, but largely ignored by the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The annual reports examine actions from the previous year.

As more and more Haitians seek refuge in the United States, refugee advocate Marleine Bastien says they're not being given a fair shake. The number of Haitian refugees arriving in the United States is on the rise as people try to flee an increasingly desperate situation in their home country, which has survived several major hurricanes and epidemics in recent years, only be thrown into political chaos after the assassination of its president last year. Unfortunately, once officials find them, most of them are deported in complete denial of their basic rights of due process. For the past few months, especially since September 2021, the Biden administration has used a health policy, Title 42, to deport Black Haitian refugees without due process. At the same time that they're deporting Haitians, the Biden administration has promised to bring in up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

Corrupt state officials and organized crime factions are to blame for Mexico’s soaring number of enforced disappearances, whose victims increasingly include children – some as young as 12, according to a new UN investigation. Just over 95,000 people were registered as disappeared at the end of November 2021. Of those, 40,000 were added in the past five years, according to the new report by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances. “Impunity in Mexico is a structural feature that favours the reproduction and cover-up of enforced disappearances and creates threats and anxiety to the victims, those defending and promoting their rights, public servants searching for the disappeared and investigating their cases, and society as a whole.”

As part of the Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America Delegation organized by solidarity organizations this spring, U.S. Congresspeople Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) visited the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). OFRANEH and the three members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus made connections about the impacts of the war on drugs, militarization, and state violence in Black communities in Honduras and in U.S. cities alike. Additionally, a delegation from the Miskitu people, who were victims of the May 2012 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) killings in Ahuas, joined OFRANEH in addressing the delegation.

On April 1, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “PBI accompanies ASODEBICOQ [the Association for the Defense of Common Goods of Quimistan] during the official presentation of declarations of Forest Protection Zone over 4 micro-watersheds in Quimistán. We celebrate these declarations and highlight the protection work of the communities as well as the defense work of ASODEBICOQ.”

On March 31, PBI-Colombia tweeted: “@Ccajar, on behalf of Afrowilches, and other human rights organizations file tutelage against #fracking pilots in #PuertoWilches for lack of prior consultation with Afro-Colombian communities who, in the midst of threats, protect their #ancestral territory, water and ecosystem.” Their tweet helped to amplify this statement from the PBI-Colombia accompanied José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR) that notes: “Human rights organizations together with the Colombia Free of Fracking Alliance, filed before a Circuit Court a charge against the Ministry of the Interior, the ANLA [National Environmental Licensing Authority] and Ecopetrol, for the violation of the right to prior, free and informed consultation of the Afro-Colombian Corporation of Puerto Wilches – Afrowilches.”