Article 30 from the UN Declaration of Human rights states “No one can take away your rights.” Today, we will be celebrating International Human Rights Day and the 64th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Do you know what the 30 articles of Human Rights are? Just in case you need a refresher, watch the video below directed by Ani Boghossian, in honor of International Human Rights Day.
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The Honduran LGBTQ community is a relatively young movement that faces overwhelming discrimination and violence in a post-coup nation. In the early years, the community was nominally tolerated; gay male hairdressers of the Air Force wives, for instance, competed as comedy acts in annual Air Force beauty pageants. It was not until the year 2000 that the first legally-constituted LGBTQ organizations appeared. Activists say that advances in human rights protections have historically been followed by waves of repression, but that the most recent wave—that which has followed the 2009 coup—is the most severe. The Diversity Resistance Movement (MDR for its name in Spanish) is an LGBTQ group that formed in the tumultuous wake of the coup. In June 2012, I sat down with three of its members—Roberto Canizales, a history professor at the National University; and Ever Guillen Castro and Jose Palacios, both advocacy officers with European cooperation agencies based in Honduras. The three long-time activists discussed everything from who’s behind the repression, to the recent murder of their friend Erick Martinez, to the hope they have for the future of their community. Visit MDR on Facebook or at their blog-news site.
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Organizaciones internacionales condenan el asesinato de abogado defensor de derechos humanos de campesinos y campesinas del Bajo Aguan y de fiscal especial para los derechos humanaos. Haga click aqui para leer el comunicado en su totalidad.
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by Lisa Haugaard
on September 25, 2012
On Saturday night, September 22th, 2012, after he attended a wedding, Antonio Trejo Cabrera was shot six times. He later died at a Tegucigalpa hospital. He was the legal representative of the MARCA campesino movement, and in June he had won the historic though still contested judgment in favor of returning three plantations to campesinos in Bajo Aguán.
“Since they couldn't beat him on the courts, they killed him,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan's peasant movements, cited in an Associated Press story. Trejo "had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions." Trejo also prepared legal challenges to a proposal by U.S. and Honduran companies to run privately-run charter cities that critics call unconstitutional, as they would skirt national labor and other laws.
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by Omar Martinez
on August 31, 2012
International Organisations condemn repression and criminalisation of peasant organisations of the Bajo Aguán, Honduras.
We, the undersigned international organisations and civil society networks, would like to express our severe concern with respect to the recent acts of repression, violence and criminalization of peasant organisations of the Bajo Aguán.
Click here to read the entire statement.
Version en español.
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by Omar Martinez
on August 03, 2012
It was a beautiful day in Bogotá, Colombia. It had not rained at all and the sun was shining with no clouds. Taking in the beautiful sunshine and enjoying the chilly yet comfortable temperature, my colleagues and I sat in a beautiful park in downtown Bogotá and discussed our upcoming meeting with ASOTRECOL, the Association of Injured and Ex-Workers of GM Colmotores de Colombia. After a brief intro into their labor plight and subsequent firings, we hailed taxis and made our way to the U.S. Embassy.
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by Omar Martinez
on August 02, 2012
As part of their Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program, PBS will be broadcasting Sin País nationally on August 9, 2012.
Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.
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by Ella Kirchner
on August 01, 2012
"The war on drugs in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala has become a war on women," say Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú. Women in these countries are at an increased risk of gender-based violence, including murder, rape, forced disappearances, and arbitrary detention. Violence is on the rise in all three countries, due to many factors, including the war on drugs. The vast majority of violent crimes are not investigated or prosecuted in these countries, which has created an atmosphere of impunity for the perpetrators. More than 95 percent of crimes against women in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala go unpunished. This lack of justice discourages victims from reporting crimes when doing so is unlikely to result in convictions. In addition, victims may be targeted if they attempt to bring charges or to call attention to the problem. In particular, women human rights defenders, journalists, indigenous activists or women who are otherwise advocating for change in their communities are targeted.
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by Omar Martinez
on June 25, 2012
Granito: How to Nail a Dictator will be nationally broadcasted on June 28, 2012 by PBS as part of the Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program.
In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efrain Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war against the country's Mayan people in the 1980s -- and Pamela Yates' 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film, aiding a new generation of human rights activists, became a granito -- a tiny grain of sand -- that helped tip the scales of justice.
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by Emily Chow
on June 08, 2012
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."
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