November, 15 2012, 03:01pm EDT
NGOs Submit Evidence to ICC on Crimes Against Humanity and Impunity in Honduras, Call on Court to Take Up Case
NEW YORK, PARIS and THE HAGUE
Today, two leading human rights organizations submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, including expert testimony, periodic compilations of crimes against humanity committed in the last year, and evidence showing there has been no accountability so far for the crimes in Honduras since the 2009 coup. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) made the submission.
Said Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Pam Spees, "Hondurans have been courageously doing all that they can to ensure accountability in the face of such violent political persecution, and many have paid an awful price. The evidence we submitted today shows not only that they cannot find justice in their own country for the killings and other abuses committed after the coup, but that they risk their lives in doing so, which is why it is imperative that the ICC take up the case."
Since the coup, hundreds of people, including journalists, trade unionists, land activists and human rights lawyers have been killed or disappeared, most recently, Antonio Trejo Cabrero, a lawyer representing peasant cooperatives, on September 23rd, and Manuel Eduardo Diaz Mazariegos, a special prosecutor for human rights, on September 24th.
Documents obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights testify to the impunity of a leading human rights abuser in his home country, which speaks significantly to the question of jurisdiction since the ICC is considered a court of last resort. Some of the evidence submitted was obtained in the course of litigating a human rights case in the U.S. on behalf of the parents of Isis Murillo, a youth killed by the Honduran military at a peaceful demonstration shortly after the June 28, 2009 military coup. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the case on June 23, 2011 against Honduran coup leader Roberto Micheletti Bain, the former head of the de facto government immediately following the coup.
CCR attorneys received affidavits from Honduran officials including the Office of the Prosecutor and Jose Alfredo Saavedra, who succeeded Micheletti as President of the Honduran National Congress after the coup, certifying that Micheletti has not been identified as responsible for Murillo's death, despite the fact that even the de facto government's own Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that he bore command responsibility for Murillo's killing, and others, as he had control over the army and evidence shows that he ensured there would be no cooperation with investigators.
The ICC submission also names Miguel Facusse as a suspect in the ongoing political persecution in the Bajo Aguan region. Facusse owns the palm oil company Dinant Corporation, and claims to own thousands of hectares of land in Bajo Aguan, though his title to some of those lands was successfully challenged by three campesino cooperatives represented by human rights lawyer Antonio Trejo in the months before Trejo was killed.
Read the ICC submission here.
For more information on the case against Micheletti, visit CCR's case page here.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. CCR is committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
(212) 614-6464LATEST NEWS
Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal Reportedly in 'Final Stages'
The leader of Hamas and Israel's prime minister both confirmed progress on a potential agreement to pause fighting and release hostages.
Nov 21, 2023
This is a developing story... Check back for possible updates...
Israel and Hamas are reportedly on the verge of a deal that would involve the release of hostages and a pause in bombing that has killed more than 13,000 people in Gaza and intensified the strip's humanitarian crisis.
An unnamed source briefed on the talks toldReuters on Tuesday that negotiations are in the "final stages" and a deal is "closer than it has ever been" since October 7, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed around 1,200 people.
The Qatar-mediated deal, according to Reuters, "envisages the release of around 50 civilian hostages by Hamas and of female and minor-aged Palestinian detainees from Israeli custody, as well as a multi-day pause in fighting."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh confirmed Tuesday that a "deal on a truce" with Israel is "close." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "we are making progress" on a hostage agreement and hopes "there will be good news soon."
Netanyahu rejected a similar proposal earlier this month.
News of a potential deal comes after six weeks of Israeli bombing that has leveled much of the Gaza Strip, destroying homes and other civilian infrastructure, killing thousands of children, and displacing more than a million people. Additionally, Israel's siege has prevented adequate humanitarian aid from reaching desperate Gazans, leaving virtually the entire population at risk of starvation and forcing hospitals in the northern part of the strip to shut down.
A spokesperson for Gaza's Health Ministry toldAl Jazeera on Tuesday that the occupancy rate in northern Gaza's hospitals has reached 190%, overrun with victims of Israeli airstrikes.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said in a speech Tuesday that "the people of Gaza are not safe anywhere: not at home, not under the U.N. flag, not in a hospital, not in the north, and not in the south."
"More than 900,000 people are sheltering in UNRWA installations, including in the north," said Lazzarini. "The conditions in these shelters are indescribable. They are massively overcrowded and shockingly unsanitary. On average, 150 people share a single toilet and 700 people share a single shower when available. These are breeding grounds for despair and disease."
A negotiated multi-day pause could allow additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, but it's unlikely that will be enough to alleviate emergency conditions in the Gaza Strip.
"We need an immediate humanitarian cease-fire," Lazzarini said. "We need respect for international humanitarian law so civilians are protected, and humanitarian organizations can work unhindered. We need a meaningful supply of humanitarian aid and commercial goods flowing into Gaza. The siege must be lifted."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Fires, Floods, and All-Time Record Heat Batter Brazil
The heat index—which combines air temperature and humidity—hit an astounding 58.5ºC (137ºF), the highest index ever recorded, in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday.
Nov 21, 2023
Amid a stifling heatwave this week Brazil is experiencing its highest temperatures ever recorded—a milestone that comes alongside global trends and fresh scientific data showing the world is far from meeting stated ambitions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to curb the climate emergency.
According to the National Institute of Meteorology, temperatures in the southeastern city of Araçuaà hit 44.8ºC (112.6ºF) on Sunday, breaking the previous record set in 2005.
It was so hot over the weekend that international pop star Taylor Swift was forced to reschedule concerts nationwide.
Meanwhile, the heat index—which combines air temperature and humidity—hit an astounding 58.5ºC (137ºF), the highest index ever recorded, Tuesday morning in the country's second-most populous city of Rio de Janeiro.
The extreme heat is having a severe and negative impact on people's ability to work and live comfortably and putting a crush on the nation's power grid. As the Associated Pressreports:
Brazilians turned to fans, air conditioners and dehumidifiers to cool down, with utilities reporting record energy demand. Power outages were reported in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
Amid the high heat, wildfires are burning widely in the Pantanal biome, the world’s biggest tropical wetlands spanning parts of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul states. The fires have ravaged an area about the size of Cyprus, or more than 947,000 hectares (about 3,600 square miles), according to the Environmental Satellite Applications Laboratory of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The wildfires are arriving earlier in some places and with much more intensity. With summer not even at its height, fears are growing of what's to come:
"The Pantanal is a region that's used to fires," biologist Gustavo Figueiroa, head of the environmental group SOS Pantanal, toldAl-Jazeera on Monday. "Normally, it regenerates naturally. But this many fires isn't normal."
Attributed in part to the El Niño effect, the historic temperatures in South America's largest country mirror the trend happening worldwide, with 2023 on track to be the hottest in 125,000 years, the result of burning fossil fuels and release of other heat-trapping gasses since the Industrial Revolution.
In addition to the heatwave and fires, heavy rains and damaging storms have brought severe flooding to other regions of the country, some resulting in the death of local residents and tens of thousands displaced.
Despite global efforts to reduce emissions and transition away from coal, oil, and gas, the latest figures from the United Nations in its 2023 Emissions Gap Report, released Monday, show that humanity is expanding its use of fossil fuels instead.
"The report shows that the emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. "A canyon littered with broken promises, broken lives, and broken records. All of this is a failure of leadership, a betrayal of the vulnerable, and a massive missed opportunity."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Oil Lobby Flooded UN Climate Talks With 7,200 Lobbyists Over 20 Years
New research, said one campaigner, "makes clear that the body in charge of implementing global policies to reduce GHG emissions is totally captured by the transnational companies that destroy the planet the most."
Nov 21, 2023
As the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis has wreaked increasingly deadly havoc across the planet over the last two decades, lobbyists and other representatives of oil and gas interests have attended United Nations-led climate talks more than 7,000 times in an effort to prevent world leaders from challenging their destructive business model.
That's according to new research released Tuesday by the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition just over a week before the start of COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.
Drawing on official attendance lists since COP9 in 2003, the research shows that the U.N. has granted at least 7,200 attendance passes to delegates for fossil fuel companies and industry trade groups, which often use their presence to peddle false climate solutions such as carbon capture.
The advocacy coalition stressed that its estimate likely understates the presence of oil and gas representatives at past U.N. climate summits given that many delegates didn't specify their affiliation or attended under the banner of nations where they do business.
At COP28, attendees will be required to disclose their affiliation under
new U.N. transparency rules put in place earlier this year after two consecutive climate summits were inundated by fossil fuel lobbyists. At COP26, oil and gas lobbyists had a larger presence than any single country, and more than 636 oil and gas lobbyists attended COP27.
Of the major oil and gas companies, Shell has sent the most staff—at least 115—to U.N. climate talks since 2003. The U.N. has granted a combined 267 attendance passes to disclosed staff from Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, and TotalEnergies over the last 20 years, the new analysis says.
The report also shows that the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), a group whose members include Exxon and Chevron, has been granted at least 2,769 passes to attend U.N.-led climate talks since 2003.
"The research makes clear that the body in charge of implementing global policies to reduce GHG emissions is totally captured by the transnational companies that destroy the planet the most," Pablo Fajardo of the Union of Affected Communities by Texaco/Chevron said in a statement. "The COP must be freed from polluting companies, or the COP becomes partly responsible for global collapse."
George Carew-Jones of the YOUNGO youth constituency at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change noted that the U.N. currently "has no conflict-of-interest rules for COPs."
"This unbelievable fact has allowed fossil fuel lobbyists to undermine talks for years, weakening the process that we are all relying on to secure our futures," Carew-Jones added. "Young people around the world are losing faith in the COP process—we desperately need strong safeguards on the role that oil and gas firms are playing in these talks."
The new research is likely to intensify concerns that fossil fuel industry influence at COP28—which is headed by the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company—will derail yet another critical opportunity to rein in oil, gas, and coal production, something that previous U.N. climate summits have failed to do in the face of worsening climate impacts across the globe.
Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, warned Monday that "without protections against conflicts of interest at COP28, the fossil fuel industry will be out in force."
"As we near the end of a year of devastating climate change-fueled disasters and record-breaking global average temperatures, the options to limit the worst potential impacts of climate change are narrowing," Mulvey wrote. "The fossil fuel industry has a lot to lose in the negotiations at COP28, and a lot to gain from continued diversion, distraction, and delay."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular