Activists killed, harassed across Latin America.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
The murder of a high-profile environmentalist in Honduras and the arrest and imprisonment of a social activist in Argentina have set off alarm bells among regional and international humanitarian organizations and turned new attention to the serious dangers human rights and ecology advocates face in Latin America.
"The criminalization of social protest as evidenced by the judicial harassment of people opposed to polluting mine operations, transgenic crops or unsustainable logging, and by the persecution of people who lay claim to their ancestral lands, or denounce the systematic violation of human rights, is back to being a common occurrence," said Argentine activist and Nobel Peace Prize (1980) recipient Adolfo Perez Esquivel.
Regional statistics paint a troubling picture. In the first 11 months of last year, 87 human rights defenders were killed in Latin America, according to Front Line Defenders (FLD), a humanitarian organization based in Ireland. More killing have taken place since then, including the murder in Honduras of Berta Caceres, an environmental activist who, allied with the Lenca indigenous group, had been challenging multinational energy and mining interests (NotiCen, March 24, 2016, and April 7, 2016). Caceres was assassinated on March 3 by a paramilitary unit, just hours after four indigenous activists were also killed.
Another case garnering international attention of late involves Milagro Sala, an Argentine political activist in the northern province of Jujuy, where the local government has made use of sympathetic judges to jail her on questionable charges (NotiSur, April 22, 2016).
"The rise of rightist political forces in countries that were led in the past decade by progressive governments acts as an incentive for extremists who promote strident nationalism and pursue their opponents judicially, as well as for paramilitary or Nazi organizations that kill, threaten and humiliate," said Javier Diaz Moreno, a member of the Asamblea por una Sociedad sin Fascismo, an anti-fascism organization in the Argentine city of Mar del Plata, where ultra-Catholic groups are particularly active.
Killed for speaking out
The FLD's most recent annual report, titled "Stop the Killing of Human Rights Defenders," points to Colombia--with 54 such killings in 2015, an average of one every six days--as South America's most dangerous country. The group presented its findings Jan. 8 in Bogota, the Colombian capital.
The people most at risk in...
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