IRTF News

A Guatemala judge who last week ordered nine former police and military officers to stand trial for alleged crimes during that country’s civil war, said Wednesday that death threats against him had increased since announcing his decision. “They send me messages, they call me on the phone, there’s vehicles following; all of that is happening,” Magistrate Miguel Ángel Gálvez said. Gálvez is no stranger to high-profile cases. He once ordered former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to be tried. “Before they had threatened me, but now they even come to hearings to photograph me,” he said. Meanwhile, Gálvez fears the government is trying to build a case against him, as has been the case with other judges and prosecutors who have worked on sensitive corruption cases, which are also sometimes part of his docket.

“This marks a sad anniversary. The injuries suffered by the victims and their families are compounded by an utter lack of accountability and total absence of any effort to make the victims whole. There is no viable route to justice open to them,” said Annie Bird, a human rights advocate and coauthor, with CEPR international policy director Alex Main, of the 2012 report “Collateral Damage of a Drug War: The May 11 Killings in Ahuas and the Impact of the US War on Drugs on La Moskitia, Honduras.” Ten years after a notorious DEA-led operation resulted in the deaths of four villagers from the Indigenous Miskitu community of Ahuas in northeastern Honduras, and the shooting of several others, survivors and family members are still awaiting recompense. And while five years ago this month the Offices of the Inspectors General (OIG) of the US Department of Justice and of the US Department State issued a report concluding the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA’s) responsibility for leading the operation, none of the individuals responsible have been held accountable.

"Ten years ago today a joint counter-narcotics team of Honduran security agents and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers opened fire on a water taxi as it approached Ahuas, a small town located in the remote Mosquitia region of northeastern Honduras. While the Honduran police announced that a “successful” drug interdiction mission had taken place, journalists and human rights advocates reported the victims were unarmed and had no known links to drug trafficking.  Instead of taking responsibility, assessing their mistakes, and examining their methods and partnerships with Honduran security forces, DEA and State Department officials obstructed U.S. and Honduran investigations of the incident and falsely reported to Members of Congress, including my staff, that the boat’s passengers had fired on security forces." -- Read Senator Leahy's statement on the ten-year anniversary of the massacre of Ahuas, Honduras.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) will begin a two-day hearing Thursday on a lawsuit against Colombia for alleged persecution, harassment and espionage against the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective, a human rights organization. This will be the first time that a human rights organization will come to this instance as a victim, informed the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), which is representing the victims in this case. CEJIL and CAJAR expressed in a statement that this litigation "represents an opportunity to help transform the current scenario of serious violations against human rights defenders throughout the continent, a situation that reduces the capacity to defend rights and limits justice and democracy".

As some U.S. states place more restrictions on abortion and Americans brace for the possibility that the Supreme Court will soon overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing the procedure, several Latin American countries have moved in the opposite direction. The latest nation to do so was Colombia. On Feb. 21, Colombia's Constitutional Court legalized abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. "Colombia now is the country with the most progressive abortion laws in Latin America and the Caribbean," says Mariana Ardila, managing attorney in Colombia for the rights group Women's Link Worldwide. In the Americas, she added, only Canada has more liberal abortion regulations than Colombia.

The origin of the dispute over land in Bajo Aguán dates back to the 1970s, when the Agrarian Reform Law handed over most of the rich land in that valley to collective organizations managed by peasants. It was a victory for poverty-stricken farmers, drawing waves of immigrants to the fertile Bajo Aguán region. Bajo Aguán has historically been characterized as one of the main regions of the country where agrarian capitalism has firmly established itself, until it completely dominates the economic model of the region. Within the framework of the ascension of the government of Xiomara Castro, and in response to one of the main demands of the peasant sector, the table for the resolution of the agrarian conflict in Bajo Aguán was installed in February, which seeks to manage and respond to the historic agrarian conflict. The table was installed in a context marked by critical economic and political interests, which is why it represents, geographically, the Bajo Aguán region for big capital and the regional political elite. The protagonists in the area maintain an open dispute, in a context of institutional openness and political will of the Government, to advance in the democratic management of the agrarian conflict in Bajo Aguán. In short, the dialogue of the Government in the conflict is an important element to consider to identify the dynamics of the blocks and the actors, in their struggle for access to and control of the territory.

A woman in El Salvador has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the death of her unborn child following an obstetric emergency, according to a rights group. The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion said on Monday that the 28-year-old woman, identified by the court only as “Esme”, had suffered a health emergency while pregnant in 2019 and sought assistance at a local hospital. She was later convicted of homicide and handed the lengthy sentence after serving two years of pre-trial detention, according to the group. The case is the first of its kind in the past seven years in the country, the group said. Abortion is illegal in El Salvador, even in cases of rape and when the woman’s health is in danger.

Environmental activists Fabian Urquijo and Jhordan Peinado, who hail from Colombia’s Santander region, received an eerie warning in February. They were named in a pamphlet shared by the Gulf Clan paramilitary group, warning that they would be killed if they did not give up their activism. More than 20 other local activists were also named in the pamphlet, which was distributed throughout their neighbourhood. Many Colombian activists are increasingly worried that they could be targeted for their work, as recent data from Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and Corporacion Compromiso, a local NGO, reveal a sharp increase in threats and violence towards environmental defenders. The stakes for activists in Santander are especially high. Over the past 18 months, the JEP recorded more than four dozen threats against activists across the region.

The Government Accountability Office, in a little-noticed report released late last month, informed lawmakers that the Border Patrol “has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths.” The omission included data the Border Patrol was required to track and turn over under legislation passed last year. The law specifically obligates the agency to include data collected by entities other than the Border Patrol itself in its reports on migrant deaths. The failings mark the first public government assessment of the agency’s response to the new legal requirements. “It confirms something that we suspected for a long time,” Daniel Martínez, an associate professor at the University of Arizona and one of the world’s leading experts on migrant deaths in the Sonoran Desert, told The Intercept. “We’ve known this for a while — that the Border Patrol is not doing an effective job of counting the dead.”