Why are these heroes treated like criminals?
Why are these heroes treated like criminals?
By Larry Ladutke
September 6, 2016 at 3:41 PM
Many people have heard of the March 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, an award-winning environmental and indigenous rights leader in Honduras, and the many threats that proceeded her death. They may not know, however, that the Honduran authorities had falsely charged Cáceres with inciting usurpation of land, coercion, and damages against the company building the hydo-electric damn opposed by her organization, the Civic Council of the Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), in 2013.
Amnesty International’s new report, “We Are Defending the Land with Our Blood,” demonstrates that Cáceres is not the only heroic land and environmental rights activist to be treated like a criminal in Honduras and Guatemala. Like Cáceres, these activists bravely protest to protect their communities’ natural resources against environmentally damaging projects or attempts to seize their land despite the deadly violence that has been used against their movements–In 2014 alone, 12 land and environmental rights activists were killed in Honduras. They must also deal with their governments’ attempts to prevent them from exercising their rights by criminalizing their activities.
Honduran authorities, for example, have required several activists from the Independent Lenca Indigenous Movement of La Paz (MILPAH) and the Indigenous Tolupán Community of San Francisco Locomapa to register at courthouses every 8 to 15 days. While this may not sound like a heavy burden in the United States, these individuals have to spend several hours travelling to the courthouses and several hours returning to their homes. This prevents them from using their time to support their families or to engage in activism to protest the construction of a hydro-electric damn and the logging of their ancestral lands. It also discourages others from protesting for fear that they will also be punished.
In northern Huehuetenango, Guatemala, authorities charged 7 water rights activists from Santa Cruz Barillas and Santa Eulalia were charged with committing illegal detention, coercion, making threats, incitement to commit crime, and obstructing justice during 3 public demonstrations that took place between April 2013 and January 2015. They spent a year and a half in prison before they were finally acquitted in July 2016.
More:
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/uncategorized/why-are-these-heroes-treated-like-criminals/
Good Reads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016166652
