March, 03 2016, 01:45pm EDT
Prize-Winning Honduran Environmental Activist Murdered
Last night assailants attacked and killed Berta Caceres, an indigenous activist who earned the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her work stopping a dam project in Honduras.
Caceres co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH. She won a fight of many years to pressure the world's largest dam builder, the Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro, to pull out of construction of a complex of large dams known as Agua Zarca.
WASHINGTON
Last night assailants attacked and killed Berta Caceres, an indigenous activist who earned the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her work stopping a dam project in Honduras.
Caceres co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, known as COPINH. She won a fight of many years to pressure the world's largest dam builder, the Chinese state-owned company Sinohydro, to pull out of construction of a complex of large dams known as Agua Zarca.
For over two decades, COPINH's leadership in defending the lands and peoples of Honduras has earned it countless popular victories. At the same time, the group's resistance to development megaprojects like dams, mines and forestry concessions has drawn the ire of loggers, dam-builders and palm oil interests. On many occasions, Berta and her colleagues were persecuted, harassed or threatened for their peaceful protests.
Friends of the Earth U.S. and Other Worlds recognized Caceres' incredible leadership and dedication, and nominated her for the Goldman Environmental Prize -- the environmental equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize. In April 2015, Caceres came to San Francisco and Washington, D.C. to accept this award, which recognizes five ordinary individuals in the world every year who work at the grassroots level to protect and enhance our environment.
Jeff Conant, senior international forests campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., made the following statement about this tragedy:
The killing of Berta Caceres is a horrible shock -- but, tragically, it is not a surprise. Everywhere in the world where Indigenous and land-based peoples defend the earth and their ways of life, they are persecuted, dispossessed, and, as in the case of Berta and literally hundreds of others in the Honduran resistance movement, murdered in cold blood. We grieve her loss, we demand a full investigation and accountability -- and we call for redoubled efforts to support frontline struggles to defend lands and indigenous territories, everywhere.
For more information on the life of Berta Caceres, visit the following links:
High profile Honduran activist Berta Caceres murdered (March 2016)
Congratulations Berta Caceres and COPINH, 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize winner (April 2015)
Berta Caceres awarded Goldman Environmental Prize 2015 (April 2015)
Who inspires us? Berta Caceres [P. 18] (Summer 2015)
Berta Caceres Is Still Alive (October 2013)
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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Israeli and U.S. leaders are bracing for what officials in both countries believe will be Iran's imminent retaliation for this month's bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
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As Israel's recent attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus and Iran's anticipated retaliation threaten to draw the United States into a wider Middle East war, Tehran has reportedly been warning Washington to stay out of the escalating conflict—or face attacks on U.S. troops in the region.
Multiple U.S. officials speaking to Axios on condition of anonymity said this week that Iran's leaders have been sending back-channel messages to the Biden administration via several Arab countries warning against more intervention.
"The Iranian message was we will attack the forces that attack us, so don't fuck with us and we won't fuck with you," one U.S. official said.
Pentagon officials said Friday that the U.S. is "moving additional assets" to the Middle East to boost regional deterrence and force protection.
When asked during a Friday press conference what his message to Iran was "at this moment," Biden replied with one word: "Don't."
"We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel," the president subsequently said. "And Iran will not succeed."
Biden's remarks came as the Middle East and beyond brace for Iran's promised retaliation for the April 1 bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed 16 people including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps senior commander Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi and other IRGC officers, as well as civilians.
Some Iranians called the attack a "declaration of war" against the Islamic Republic.
Biden administration officials maintain the U.S. had nothing to do with the consulate bombing. However, Iranian officials have said that they hold Washington responsible for the strike.
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On Thursday, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem issued a security warning and restricted its staffers' travel in anticipation of a possibly imminent Iranian response to the Damascus attack. According toPolitico, U.S. officials believe that "Iran is calibrating its plans for a major retaliatory strike against Israel to send a message—but not spark a regional war that compels Washington to respond."
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A week after Israeli officials promised the Biden administration they would open a border crossing and a port to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, relief organizations and the United Nations reported Friday that life-saving supplies are still being blocked, and warned that the White House must take more decisive action to force Israel to stop starving Palestinians.
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The phone call came in response to Israel's bombing of a World Central Kitchen aid convoy that killed seven aid workers. On the call, Biden reportedly threatened to halt weapons deliveries unless a surge in humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza.
But as The Guardian reported Friday, the Ashdod port has not been opened yet, and instead of opening the Erez crossing last Sunday as promised, Israel has opened another crossing into northern Gaza but has not yet allowed U.N. agencies to use it.
"Netanyahu scammed Biden again: A week after he promised to open the Erez crossing and Ashdod port to increase aid to Gaza, the [Israel Defense Forces] & port authorities say they NEVER received any instructions of this nature," said Muhammad Shehada, communications chief for Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, citing reporting from Israel's N12 channel.
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"The call for 500 trucks, with a combination of commercial and humanitarian shipments, is the absolute minimum," Juliette Touma, communications director for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) toldThe Guardian. "Probably what Gaza needs is at least 1,000 trucks a day."
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Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, said Friday that "very limited" aid deliveries have continued to contribute to low birth weights in babies who have been born in northern Gaza in recent weeks.
"It's very easy for Israel to say, 'We've sent you 1,000 trucks so please deliver them inside Gaza,'" McGoldrick said, noting that Israel has held trucks up at checkpoints "for hours" and that many roads are not open to deliveries.
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The news that Israel has not allowed a "flood" of aid into Gaza since Biden threatened Netanyahu with an end to weapons transfers came days after Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), admitted to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) that reports of famine in parts of Gaza are now "credible."
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At least 33,634 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since October, with U.S. weapons used in much of the bombardment.
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The Online Speech Given by Yanis Varoufakis After German Police Raid Palestine Congress
"Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine."
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Prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis on Friday condemned the German government's complicity in Israel's ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza as well as its domestic crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy in an online speech originally meant to be delivered before a conference that was raided by Berlin police earlier in the day.
Varoufakis—a former Greek finance minister who heads the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—was scheduled to address the Palestine Congress, which was slated to run through Sunday in the German capital. However, hundreds of police officers blockaded the event venue on Germaniastraße in Templehof before storming the building and demanding organizers cut the livestream and end the event. Several people including at least one Jewish participant were led away by police.
"This is what democracy in Europe right now really looks like!" DiEM25 said on social media.
In his speech, Varoufakis
lamented that "a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity."
"You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations," Varoufakis said, referring to the German political establishment—including the leftist Greens.
"So, let's be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them," Varoufakis said. "Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine."
Varoufakis' speech comes as Germany faces an International Court of Justice case brought by Nicaragua and which accuses Berlin of complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where nearly 110,000 Palestinians—mostly innocent men, women, and children—have been killed or maimed by over the past six months.
The convening of the Palestine Congress, and the antagonism against it by authorities, coincides with a growing crackdown by German officials on pro-Palestinian voices in academic, artistic, literary, and other spaces.
Watch Varoufakis' speech:
The speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style). Judge for yourselves the kind of society Germany is becoming when its police bans the following words:
Friends,
Congratulations, and heartfelt… pic.twitter.com/6Rnw2bwQPL
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) April 12, 2024
Read Varoufakis' remarks as prepared for delivery:
Friends,
Congratulations, and heartfelt thanks, for being here, despite the threats, despite the ironclad police outside this venue, despite the panoply of the German press, despite the German state, despite the German political system that demonizes you for being here.
"Why a Palestinian Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?" a German journalist asked me recently. Because, as Hanan Asrawi once said: "We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering."
Today, Asrawi's reason has grown depressingly stronger: Because we cannot rely on the silenced who are also massacred and starved to tell us about the massacres and the starvation.
But there is another reason too: Because a proud, a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.
I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. But I am incredibly proud to be here amongst Jews and Palestinians—to blend my voice for peace and universal human rights with Jewish voices for peace and universal human rights—with Palestinian voices for peace and universal human rights. Being together, here, today, is proof that coexistence is not only possible—but that it is here! Already.
"Why not a Jewish Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?" the same German journalist asked me, imagining that he was being smart. I welcomed his question.
For if a single Jew is threatened, anywhere, just because she or he is Jewish, I shall wear the Star of David on my lapel and offer my solidarity—whatever the cost, whatever it takes.
So, let's be clear: If Jews were under attack, anywhere in the world, I would be the first to canvass for a Jewish Congress in which to register our solidarity. Similarly, when Palestinians are massacred because they are Palestinians—under a dogma that to be dead they must have been Hamas—I shall wear my keffiyeh and offer my solidarity whatever the cost, whatever it takes.
Universal human rights are either universal or they mean nothing.
With this in mind, I answered the German journalist's question with a few of my own:
- Are 2 million Israeli Jews, who were thrown out of their homes and into an open-air prison 80 years ago, still being kept in that open-air prison, without access to the outside world, with minimal food and water, no chance of a normal life, of traveling anywhere, and bombed periodically for 80 years? No.
- Are Israeli Jews being starved intentionally by an army of occupation, their children writhing on the floor, screaming from hunger? No.
- Are there thousands of Jewish injured children with no surviving parents crawling through the rubble of what used to be their homes? No.
- Are Israeli Jews being bombed by the world's most sophisticated planes and bombs today? No.
- Are Israeli Jews experiencing complete ecocide of what little land they can still call their own, not one tree left under which to seek shade or whose fruit to taste? No.
- Are Israeli Jewish children killed by snipers today at the orders of a member state of the United Nations? No.
- Are Israeli Jews driven out of their homes by armed gangs today? No.
- Is Israel fighting for its existence today? No.
If the answer to any of these questions was yes, I would be participating in a Jewish Solidarity Congress today.
Friends, today, we would have loved to have a decent, democratic, mutually respectful debate on how to bring peace and universal human rights for everyone, Jews and Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with people who think differently to us.
Sadly, the whole of the German political system has decided not to allow this. In a joint statement including not just the CDU-CSU or the FDP but also the SPD, the Greens and, remarkably, two leaders of Die Linke, joined forces to ensure that such a civilized debate, in which we may disagree agreeably, never takes place in Germany.
I say to them: You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations. You chose this. Not us. You accuse us of anti-Semitic hatred. We accuse you of being the antisemite's best friend by equating the right of Israel to commit war crimes with the right of Israeli Jews to defend themselves.
You accuse us of supporting terrorism. We accuse you of equating legitimate resistance to an apartheid state with atrocities against civilians which I have always and will always condemn, whomever commits them—Palestinians, Jewish settlers, my own family, whomever. We accuse you of not recognizing the duty of the people of Gaza to tear down the wall of the open prison they have been encased in for 80 years—and of equating this act of tearing down the Wall of Shame—which is no more defensible than the Berlin Wall was—with acts of terror.
You accuse us of trivializing Hamas' October 7 terror. We accuse you of trivializing the 80 years of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erection of an ironclad apartheid system across Israel-Palestine. We accuse you of trivializing Netanyahu's long-term support of Hamas as a means of destroying the two-state-solution that you claim to favor. We accuse you of trivializing the unprecedented terror unleashed by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Easr Jerusalem.
You accuse the organizers of today's Congress that we are, and I quote, "not interested in talking about possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East against the background of the war in Gaza." Are you serious? Have you lost your mind? We accuse you of supporting a German state that is, after the United States, the largest supplier of the weapons that the Netanyahu government uses to massacre Palestinians as part of a grand plan to make a two-state solution, and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, impossible.
We accuse you of never answering the pertinent question that every German must answer: How much Palestinian blood must flow before your justified guilt over the Holocaust is washed away?
So, let' s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them. Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine.
And so that we are even clearer on the questions, legitimate and malignant, that we must always be ready to answer: Do I condemn Hamas' atrocities? I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning—but inexorable—ethnic cleansing program.
Put differently, I condemn every attack on civilians while, at the same time, I celebrate anyone who risks their life to TEAR DOWN THE WALL.
Is Israel not engaged in a war for its very existence? No, it is not. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with perhaps the most technologically advanced army in the world and the panoply of the U.S. military machine having its back. There is no symmetry with Hamas, a group which can cause serious damage to Israelis but which has no capacity whatsoever to defeat Israel's military, or even to prevent Israel from continuing to implement the slow genocide of Palestinians under the system of apartheid that has been erected with longstanding U.S. and E.U. support.
Are Israelis not justified to fear that Hamas wants to exterminate them? Of course they are! Jews have suffered a Holocaust that was preceded by pogroms and a deep-seated antisemitism permeating Europe and the Americas for centuries. It is only natural that Israelis live in fear of a new pogrom if the Israeli army folds. However, by imposing apartheid on their neighbors, by treating them like sub-humans, the Israeli state is stoking the fires of antisemitism, is strengthening Palestinians and Israelis who just want to annihilate each other, and, in the end, contributing to the awful insecurity consuming Jews in Israel and the diaspora.
Apartheid against the Palestinians is the Israelis' worst "self-defense."
What about antisemitism? It is always a clear and present danger. And it must be eradicated, especially amongst the ranks of the global Left and the Palestinians fighting for Palestinian civil liberties around the world.
Why don't Palestinians pursue their objectives by peaceful means? They did. The PLO recognized Israel and renounced armed struggle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleansing. That is what nurtured Hamas and elevated it in the eyes of many Palestinians as the only alternative to a slow genocide under Israel's apartheid.
What should be done now? What might bring peace to Israel-Palestine? An immediate ceasefire. The release of all hostages: Hamas' and the thousands held by Israel. A peace process, under the U.N., supported by a commitment by the international community to end apartheid and to safeguard equal civil liberties for all.
As for what must replace apartheid, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to decide between the two-state solution and the solution of a single federal secular state.
Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine. We are here to tell German democrats, including our former comrades of Die Linke, that they have covered themselves in shame long enough—that two wrongs do not one right make—that allowing Israel to get away with war crimes is not going to ameliorate the legacy of Germany's crimes against the Jewish people.
Beyond today's congress, we have a duty, in Germany, to change the conversation. We have a duty to persuade the vast majority of decent Germans out there that universal human rights are what matters. That "never again" means never again. For anyone, Jew, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, Yemeni, Sudanese, Rwandan—for everyone, everywhere.
In this context, I am pleased to announce that DiEM25's German political party MERA25 will be on the ballot paper in the European Parliament election this coming June—seeking the vote of German humanists who crave a member of European Parliament representing Germany and calling out the E.U.'s complicity in genocide—a complicity that is Europe's greatest gift to the antisemites in Europe and beyond.
I salute you all and suggest we never forget that none of us are free if one of us is in chains.
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