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For Immediate Release
October, 11 2011, 06:44am EDT
Contact:
Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International Coordinator of the Forests and Biodiversity Programme (Costa Rica) – Email: isaac@coecoceiba.org or Tel: + 506 8338 32 03 (Costa Rica)
New Report: Community Rights Help Communities Win
A new report released today [October 13] by Friends of the Earth International illustrates the importance of enforcing local community and Indigenous Peoples' rights, featuring struggles of groups and communities from all continents. [1]
The report can be downloaded from https://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2011/community-rights-corporate-wrongs/view
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica
A new report released today [October 13] by Friends of the Earth International illustrates the importance of enforcing local community and Indigenous Peoples' rights, featuring struggles of groups and communities from all continents. [1]
The report can be downloaded from https://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2011/community-rights-corporate-wrongs/view
"Community rights allow us to protect traditional knowledge and ownership, as well as our natural resources. By enforcing their rights communities can overcome local struggles and win. For instance with community-based forest governance local people can help protect their forests as well as the climate," said Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth International Coordinator of the Forests and Biodiversity Programme.
The report 'Communities Rights, Corporate Wrongs', features local struggles that have the defence and enforcement of community rights at their heart and includes the following cases :
- The Subanon Indigenous communities in Mindanao, the Philippines who successfully worked together to halt a damaging mine
- Indigenous communities in Sarawak, Indonesia displaced by a mega-dam having their case heard, thanks to legal support
- Communities in Costa Rica mobilised against mining
- Communities in Ogoniland in Nigeria resisting against oil giant Shell
- Local communities, Indigenous Peoples and activists in the US and Canada resisting a tar sands oil pipeline that would stretch from Alberta to Texas.
- Bagyeli Indigenous communities in Cameroon asserting their rights and demarcating ancestral territories.
The report also illustrates how community rights help strengthen 'community-based forest governance', the regulations and practices used by many communities for the conservation and sustainable use of their forests.
Community-based forest governance is communal and is traditionally identified with the protection of the forests - in contrast to their industrial and commercial exploitation, which contribute to deforestation, loss or livelihoods and biodiversity, and climate change.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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Mamdani Denounces Cuomo 'Cowardice,' Pledges to Defend NYC From Trump in Mayoral Debate
Capitulation to the president, said the Democratic mayoral candidate, is "what we would see from Donald Trump's puppet."
Oct 17, 2025
New York City mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani did not have to reach far back into the past to remind viewers of Thursday night's debate that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has displayed a refusal to stand up to President Donald Trump—which he argued could put the city at risk as the president continues to threaten cities in blue states.
When Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, addressed Trump and said, "I will fight you every step of the way if you try to hurt New York," Mamdani was quick to jump in.
"Unless he weaponizes the justice system to go after the attorney general of the state, in which case you'll issue a statement that doesn't even name the president," said the state Assembly member. "And no matter what you think about Donald Trump, you know that not even being able to name him is an act of cowardice."
Andrew Cuomo acts tough on TV. But when Donald Trump came after our Attorney General, Cuomo couldn't even name him. That's cowardice. pic.twitter.com/kThCkhFBye
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 16, 2025
Mamdani was referring to a statement released last week by Cuomo after Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged bank fraud. James has been a target of the president, especially since she successfully prosecuted him for financial fraud, and he forced a US attorney out of his job over his refusal to file charges against New York's top law enforcement official.
In his initial statement after the indictment, Cuomo did not mention James or Trump by name, saying only that "when the law is weaponized or manipulated to advance political agendas, it erodes public trust and weakens the very foundation of justice."
He named the president and attorney general, who is a close ally of Mamdani, in a subsequent statement, but when asked by a PIX 11 reporter this week whether he would condemn Trump for using the DOJ to target James, he replied, "Condemn him for what?”
"Both sides, Democrats and Republicans believe there’s too much politics in the justice system," added the former governor, who was forced to resign in 2021 after being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women.
The interview led Mamdani to warn that "Andrew Cuomo is incapable of speaking clearly and directly about Trump’s authoritarianism," and the mayoral candidate doubled down on that assertion during the debate, saying that capitulation to the president is "what we would see from Donald Trump's puppet."
The exchange comes as Trump is ramping up federal law enforcement operations in cities including Chicago and Portland, Oregon, which he has claimed are overrun with undocumented immigrants who commit crimes and violent left-wing protesters—allegations that are not supported by statistical data and have been rejected by courts, local residents, and officials.
The president has threatened to deploy the National Guard to multiple Democratic-led cities—which both Mamdani and Cuomo said they oppose during the debate—but Mamdani warned the president will "have to get through me as the next mayor of the city" if he attacks New York City as he's threatened to, should the progressive Democrat win the election.
Trump has also threatened to rip federal funding away from the city if Mamdani wins, and has reportedly spoken to Cuomo about the race in a recent call, weighing the possibility of getting involved in the election to try to sway the vote toward the former governor. Both Cuomo and Trump have denied the call took place.
As the debate aired, Mamdani reminded New Yorkers of previous comments Cuomo has made about Trump's deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Los Angeles, when he said officers were "going to do things that are illegal and unconstitutional, but let's not overreact"—a reference to protests against the deployment.
"This is how Andrew Cuomo thinks we should respond to authoritarianism," said Mamdani, who was filmed earlier this year joining other New Yorkers in confronting Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, on the abduction of former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil.
He also talked about the terror that's unfolded in recent months at the city's immigration court, where federal officers have detained people attending asylum hearings, threw a woman to the ground as she was pleading with agents not to take her husband away from her and her children, and arrested Democratic officials who were helping immigrants and protesting the enforcement actions.
"I agree that we need more legal representation," said Mamdani. "I also think we need to actually be able to stand up to Donald Trump."
What used to be a place of joy or simple routine check-ins has become a horror house of fear and separation under this federal government.
As someone who would be the first immigrant Mayor in generations, I refuse to stand for it. pic.twitter.com/AIDt6WuxGc
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) October 17, 2025
During the debate, Mamdani also hammered home his campaign's central message regarding the need to make the city more affordable for working people—lambasting Cuomo for his focus on the rent-stabilized apartment Mamdani and his wife live in, which the former governor has said the couple should leave to allow low-income New Yorkers to live there.
"You've heard it from Andrew Cuomo that the No. 1 crisis in the city, the housing crisis, the answer is to evict my wife and I," said Mamdani. "He thinks you address this crisis by unleashing my landlord's ability to raise my rent. If you think the problem in this city is that my rent is too low, vote for him. If you know that the problem in this city is that your rent it too high, vote for me."
When Cuomo invoked Mamdani's lack of experience in an executive role and suggested he would be ill-prepared to lead the city through a crisis, Mamdani responded with a barb regarding Cuomo's March 2020 order that nursing homes allow residents to be readmitted after a Covid-19 diagnosis, which was followed by efforts to undercount the death toll in the facilities.
"If we have a health pandemic then why would New Yorkers turn back to the governor who sent seniors to their death in nursing homes?" said Mamdani. "That's the kind of experience that's on offer here today."
"What I don't have in experience I make up for in integrity," he said, turning to his rival, "and what you don't have in integrity you could never make up for in experience."
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More Than 170 US Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents, Some Abused or Detained for Days: ProPublica
"Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents," the investigation found.
Oct 17, 2025
More than 170 US citizens have been detained by immigration agents against their will since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, according to a new investigation by ProPublica.
The reporters examined every publicly available case they could find in which citizens were detained by immigration officers.
"Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents," they wrote in the report published Thursday. "They've had their necks kneeled on. They've been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched."
"About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones," continued the report.
The findings fly in the face of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's recent assertion, in a ruling that allowed the Trump administration to use racial profiling to carry out its mass deportation agenda in Los Angeles, that "if the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go."
Video evidence from Los Angeles has shown immigration officials carrying out what appear to be large, indiscriminate roundups of random groups of Latino people.
Meanwhile, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who has been at the helm of Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz" in Chicago, has acknowledged in an interview with a local news station that immigration enforcement decides whether to detain people based on "how they look," and suggested that the white reporter interviewing him would be less likely to be detained.
ProPublica's report bolsters the accusation that the administration is carrying out explicit racial profiling. The investigation found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship, almost all of whom were Latino.
And while immigration officials are allowed to arrest citizens who obstruct their operations or assault officers, it found that the 130 cases in which Americans were accused of doing so "often wilted under scrutiny." In nearly 50, it said, charges were never filed or the cases were dismissed, while only a small number have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Citizens who have been detained have often faced severe mistreatment at the hands of officers:
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed, and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative.
In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn't given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery.
In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
The investigation also found that at least 20 of the detained US citizens were children, including two with cancer. Another four were held, with their undocumented mother, for weeks without access to a lawyer. They were released following the intervention of Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), but still remain without their mother, who has not been accused of a crime.
In many cases, agents were found to have ignored proof of citizenship. In one case, they tackled an Alabama construction worker, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, to the ground even as he shouted that he was a citizen. When officers took out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to US citizens, they dismissed it as fake and held Garcia in handcuffs for over an hour. Agents later detained him a second time and dismissed his REAL ID again, while also holding two other workers with legal status.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called ProPublica's report "absolutely shocking."
" ICE does not have the authority to detain US citizens during immigration enforcement—full stop," she said. "The Trump administration is out of control, violating the rights of American citizens. They must be held accountable."
ProPublica's investigation focused on the detention of US citizens, but Kavanaugh's contention that legal immigrants are also "promptly released" is also flagrantly untrue. While there has not been a comprehensive effort to aggregate the number of green-card or visa holders detained or deported, there have been numerous documented cases of them falling into the grasp of immigration enforcement without any clear justification.
Earlier this week, the BBC reported that 48-year-old Paramjit Singh, a green-card holder who has a brain tumor and a heart condition, has been in ICE detention for over two months and has been denied the medical care he needs, despite there being no active cases against him. Another green-card holder in Kentucky, Vicente Castillo Flores, who has lived in the US for over 30 years, was detained by ICE earlier this month at a toll booth despite showing agents his work visa. According to Newsweek, the agency has not provided a reason for why he was detained despite his legal status.
The ProPublica reporters noted that their investigation was undertaken because "the government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans." They said the number of US citizens held in detention was likely even higher than what they reported.
Their report is the latest in a long line of reports that have revealed an extraordinary lack of accountability and transparency for ICE and Trump's immigration enforcement agenda, which has mainly gone after people without criminal records despite Trump's claims to the contrary.
Last month, an investigation from the Miami Herald found that over 1,000 detainees held at Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility had mysteriously vanished, with no record of where they went, leading the Florida Immigrant Coalition to describe it as "an extrajudicial black site."
Three individuals have died in ICE custody just over the past two weeks, bringing the total number up to 23 this year, the highest number in 20 years.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called ProPublica's report "an outrage."
"Every single Republican needs to answer for this," she said. "We can't let this administration sweep this kind of gross abuse of power under the rug."
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Venezuelan Ambassador Warns Trump Admin Is ‘Bloodthirsty’ Killer ‘Roaming Around the Caribbean’
The Venezuelan ambassador accused the Trump administration of "killing everyone who is on the sea working."
Oct 17, 2025
Venezuelan United Nations Ambassador Samuel Moncada on Thursday delivered a scathing denunciation of US President Donald Trump's drone attacks on purported drug boats off the coast of his country.
While holding up a copy of Thursday's edition of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, which highlighted two Trinidadian citizens who were killed by a US drone strike while on a boat, Moncada lambasted the Trump administration and compared it to a serial killer.
"There is a killer roaming around the Caribbean!" he declared. "He's bloodthirsty! He's killing everyone who is on the sea working! And people from different countries—Colombia, Trinidad, etc.—are suffering the effects of these massacres!"
🇻🇪 At the UN, Venezuela alerts of "a killer roaming around the Caribbean" committing massacres@SMoncada_VEN displays today's @GuardianTT newspaper, which reported that two Trinbagonians were murdered in the latest U.S. strike on a boat in the Caribbean pic.twitter.com/ztIBxawWQk
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) October 16, 2025
According to Reuters, Moncada this week also sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council asking it to rule on the legality of the US strikes, while also releasing a statement affirming Venezuela's sovereignty.
The two Trinidadian citizens mentioned by Moncada were killed in a Tuesday drone strike that also reportedly took the lives of four other men.
In interviews with the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, friends and relatives of 26-year-old Chad Joseph, one of the men killed in the strike, denied that he was involved with any drug trafficking.
"I find it wrong because it have—people will be innocent and they will still do and say otherwise," Joseph's mother, Lenore Burnley, told the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian. "The sea law is they supposed to stop the boat and intercept it, not blow it up like that.”
With the Tuesday strike, the total number of people killed by the Trump administration's attacks on suspected drug boats totaled at least 27.
The administration carried out yet another boat strike on Thursday, and Reuters reported that at least two crew members had survived the attack, marking the first time that an attack on suspected drug vessels had left any survivors.
Reuters noted that "the development raises new questions, including whether the US military rendered aid to the survivors and whether they are now in US military custody, possibly as prisoners of war."
The Trump administration so far has provided no legal justification for the strikes on boats, nor has it provided any evidence that any of the boats it has targeted were involved in the trafficking of illegal drugs.
Many legal experts believe that the strikes on the boats would be illegal even if they were found to have been carrying drugs, however, and some critics have accused the Trump administration of extrajudicial murder.
Moncada said Thursday that the Trump administration, which has also reportedly approved "lethal operations" by the CIA in Venezuela, is "looking for wars."
“Everybody knows what’s going on here," he said. "They are fabricating a war. The emperor is naked. Stop pretending this is complicated.”
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