2012

You may not know who Israel Arzate Meléndez is, but we think you should hear his story.

In February 2010, Israel was picked up by Mexican soldiers in Ciudad Juarez. Sounds terrifying, right? Well, it gets worse. He was then taken to a military base where he was beaten, given electric shocks, and suffocated repeatedly until he finally gave in and confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. No one seemed to mind that it was a false confession, only offered to make the torture stop.

By: Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director 6/8/2012

Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 93 other members of the Congress sent a letter on March 12th, 2012 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing grave concern about human rights violations in Honduras, particularly the murder of 45 people associated with small farmer associations in Bajo Aguán.

"This is a wake up call for the Lobo Administration," said Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group. "Forty-five campesino leaders in a small area of Honduras have been murdered. Human rights defenders of all stripes -- campesino leaders, lawyers, LGBT community members, women defenders, journalists, opposition activists -- are being threatened and killed. And not only is the Honduran government failing to do enough to protect them and prosecute those who endanger them, but in too many cases, police or military agents are involved directly or are collaborating with those who commit abuses. We need to see greater effort to protect the rule of law in Honduras."

LAWGEF provided information for the letter and worked with an energetic network of activists across the country, with leadership from the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America, to encourage the amazing number of signers.

Honduras was singled out for a visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, who following her visit, asserted that: "The 2009 coup d'état aggravated institutional weaknesses, increased the vulnerability of human rights defenders and provoked a major polarisation in society. Due to the exposed nature of their activities, human rights defenders continue to suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, death threats, attacks, harassment and stigmatisation." She went on to say, "I have observed that certain categories of human rights defenders are at particular risk, including journalists, staff of the National Human Rights Commission, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, as well as defenders working on the rights of women, children, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex community, the indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities as well as those working on environmental and land rights issues." 

"We just want the government to enforce its own laws," we heard over and over again, as we listened to women and men from campesino communities who were testifying about murder, torture and violent land evictions in Bajo Aguán, Honduras.  

By: Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director 6/8/12

Meeting with Colombian President Santos following the Summit of the Americas, President Obama declared that the Colombian government had met the terms of the Labor Action Plan, allowing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to take effect May 15th. The Latin America Working Group joined U.S. and Colombian unions and nongovernmental groups in condemning this action, which makes a mockery of the commitment Mr. Obama made to ensure that all the elements of the Labor Action Plan would be fulfilled.

A week after President Obama made this announcement, trade unionists belonging to the SINTRAEMCALI union received invitations to their own funeral, with two bullets, two roses and a prayer book. Thirty trade unionists were killed in 2011, and at least four were killed so far this year. While the Colombian government has improved protection programs for trade unionists, a positive impact of the plan, most of the killers of trade unionists remain free, and threats are rarely even investigated.

In other violations of the Labor Action Plan, it continues to be a common practice to fire workers who wish to affiliate with a union or who were engaged in organizing, and then to rehire workers willing to sign letters saying they are not affiliated with a trade union. The Colombian government issued regulations to ban "labor cooperatives" that undermine unions (they act as if workers are self-employed, so that the companies that hire them need not abide by labor law), but has failed to address other similar arrangements with different names. Many companies, including in sectors such as sugar, oil palm, coffee, health, mining, ports and transport, are forming associations with other names to skirt the cooperatives ban.

Leo Gerard, President of the Steelworkers Union, declared, "We cannot certify as compliant with the Labor Action Plan a blacklisted country that continues to countenance murder. That would violate everything good and moral that we stand for as a people." We agree with him. LAWG will continue to work with unions, NGOs and interested members of Congress to put pressure on both governments to ensure full implementation of the Labor Action Plan.

On Monday, May 4, 2012 Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, a human rights lawyer who has worked tirelessly with Tlachinollan, a human rights center in the mountains of Guerrero, received an anonymous death threat alluding to certain cases taken on by the organization.  Understandably, Vidulfo has left Mexico for fear over his safety. The threat stated:

On May 11 in rural Honduras, a late-night anti-narcotic mission involving American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and U.S.-owned equipment resulted in the death of four people—two of them pregnant women, a fourteen-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man.  One of the leading Honduran human rights organizations, COFADEH, released this detailed report, calling the event “unacceptable and reprehensible.”

In a surprise move, the Guatemalan government has announced the effective closing of the “Peace Archives,” one of the most active and important institutions created in the wake of the 1996 peace accords to promote peace, truth and reconciliation. According to Guatemalan press accounts, the Secretary of Peace Antonio Arenales Forno stated that by June 29 the government would “cancel [labor] contracts for which I see no justification and end the functions of an office that I find makes no sense.”

Anastasio Hernandez was a 42-year old construction worker, husband, father of five children, and a long-time resident of San Diego, CA. That’s before he was captured by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and, instead of being deported, was brutally beaten and tased to death.

With nearly 2 million Cubans in the United States, approximately 400,000 travelled last year to Cuba. Fifty percent of family members who travel to Cuba are U.S. residents, not citizens. U.S. Rep. David Rivera has proposed an amendment to make it illegal for Cuban residents living in the U.S. to travel to Cuba for any reason (i.e. a death in the family, daughter is sick…etc.) and then return to the United States. What will happen if this goes into effect? Well, before that happens, the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights (CACFR) is speaking out; and its executive director, Silvia Wilhelm, said, “We will fight this cruelty proposed by Rivera.” The Latin America Working Group is 100% behind CACFR. See below for CACFR's full press release.

Anastasio Hernández Rojas lay face down on the ground, defenseless and screaming for help, on the evening of May 28, 2010 in San Diego, CA. His feet were bound and his hands were cuffed behind his back as Border Patrol agents beat him ruthlessly. Eye-witnesses pleaded for the agents to stop the beating, but they continued. After an agent shot Anastasio with a taser five times, he stopped breathing, and later died. Border Patrol agents have killed seven residents of border communities in the past two years, including a 15-year-old boy. Despite public outcry, protests, and countless meetings with agency leadership, the Border Patrol has taken no known action to ensure the agents involved are held accountable.

Unchecked abuse and brutality by the Border Patrol extends beyond the string of killings and serious injuries that have captured major media attention. Last year, the humanitarian aid organization No More Deaths released a report addressing the 30,000 abuse against migrants by the Border Patrol the group has documented during the past three years. Abuses range from denial of needed food, water and medical attention to physical and psychological mistreatment.  Despite protests and the filing dozens of complaints, justice has yet to be achieved in any of these cases. 

In March, LAWG worked with human rights partners to bring the widespread culture of impunity in the Border Patrol in which abusive behavior goes unpunished and uncorrected to the attention of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).   In a hearing before the Commission, representatives from No More Deaths and other advocates testified about the dangerous and abusive U.S. Border Patrol practices, demanding accountability and transparency from the agency.  

As John Carlos Frey, a migrant rights activist and actor, put it in a recently aired PBS documentary, “If we really do believe in law and order, let’s make our own officers accountable to that law and order. Let’s have a little transparency; people have died, people have been killed.” It’s time for the largest law enforcement agency in the United States, Customs and Border Protection, to be held accountable – and take concrete steps to prevent further abuse and brutality.