Farmers sue World Bank lending arm over alleged violence in Honduras
Farmers sue World Bank lending arm over alleged violence in Honduras
Complaint lodged with US federal court claims World Bank’s private sector lending arm is ‘knowingly profiting from the financing of murder’
Claire Provost
@claireprovost
Wednesday 8 March 2017 09.28 EST
Peasants in Honduras have sued a branch of the World Bank over its financing of the corporation Dinant, which has vast palm oil plantations in Bajo Aguán valley in the country’s north. Lawyers for the farmers say they are seeking compensation for alleged attacks and killings, including actions by the company’s private security forces.
Attorneys for the NGO EarthRights International (ERI) filed the suit on the farmers’ behalf on Tuesday, at a US federal court in Washington DC, where the World Bank is headquartered.
The suit’s plaintiffs include more than 15 individuals. There are two class action claims: one regarding roughly 200 members of the Panamá community, the second representing roughly 1,000 people and focused on allegedly “unjust” profit-making from contested land acquisitions in the past.
The 132-page legal complaint says the plaintiffs are seeking compensation for “murders, torture, assault, battery, trespass, unjust enrichment and other acts of aggression”. Ultimately, it says, the case is about World Bank entities “knowingly profiting from the financing of murder”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/mar/08/farmers-sue-world-bank-lending-arm-ifc-over-alleged-violence-in-honduras
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Published on Wednesday, March 08, 2017
byCommon Dreams
Honduran Farmers Sue World Bank Lending Arm for 'Profiting From Murder'
A private lending arm of the World Bank is not 'ending poverty,' it is 'ending the lives of the poor,' says one farmer
byNika Knight, staff writer
Members of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguán Valley (MUCA) carry mock coffins bearing photos of murdered relatives during a 2012 march against the ongoing violence in the Bajo Aguán valley. (Photo: AFP)
Honduran farmers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against a branch of the World Bank for funding a massive palm oil corporation that the suit alleges has been responsible for the killings of over 100 farmers, as well as torture, violent assaults, and "other acts of aggression."
The World Bank has "knowingly profited from the financing of murder," argues the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
"We have lost our compañeros, they have left our children without fathers, it's been difficult to move forward, we live from our families and our land and now we are left with nothing," said one of the farmers, according to EarthRights International (ERI), the nonprofit which filed the suit on the farmers' behalf.
All the farmers named in the suit were protected by the pseudonyms Juan Doe and Juana Doe, to shield them from retaliation on the part of the palm oil company, Dinant.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/08/honduran-farmers-sue-world-bank-lending-arm-profiting-murder
