November, 03 2016, 10:30am EDT
In Solidarity With the Lenca People
And rejection of the Agua Zarca Project report by the mission of the FMO (Entrepreneurial Development Bank)
Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean - ATALC - wishes to express to the international community our rejection of the report delivered by the mission contracted by the FMO (Entrepreneurial Development Bank) related to the construction of the Agua Zarca project in Honduras. We also wish to show our solidarity with the Honduran people in general, and with the Rio Blanco communities in particular, who are legitimately defending their land from threats to their livelihood and their culture, as represented by the construction of hydro-electric mega projects.
The appalling murders of Berta Caceres, other leaders of the COPINH movement and of nine Movimiento Indigena Lenca de la Paz Honduras - MILPAH leaders, the crimes against the indigenous Tolupan people, students, the murder of over a hundred members of rural organisations in Aguan and the Sula Valley, the high levels of feminicide, massacres of young people, and the high rate of impunity and torture, reflect the consequences of inequitable Trade Agreements with Europe and the United States. Militarisation and drug trafficking, among other imposed realities, reflect the dangers faced by activists and social leaders who are defending their rights in a situation where there are questions relating to the companies' violations of financial, social, environmental and territorial human rights.
For this reason, we consider it unacceptable that the reports submitted by the financial backers of the development projects should resort to discrediting the actions taken by the communities and their social movements, in order to try and legitimise the impositions made by companies which are financed by foreign bank capital. We condemn these plans, like those endorsed by FMO with the mission, which further victimise the communities and processes, and increase the risks for their collective territorial security by creating conditions which prevent the truth being uncovered, justice being applied, full compensation and guarantees that the violence suffered in the past will not be repeated.
In agreement with the statement by Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous People, we consider the Rio Blanco case emblematic for what it represents in terms of violence, impunity and the lack of access to justice for the people of this Mesoamerican country. We therefore request, respectfully and categorically, that the Honduran State amplifies and concretises its lines of investigation into all of the irregularities that have taken place in relation to the imposition of these megaprojects. We also request that the Honduran State does not promote steps backward due to tactics like the preparation of reports like the FMO one detailed above, which also ignores the potential future responsibilities of these megaprojects' financial backers. We also call on the Netherlands, Finland and Spain - country - headquarters and majority shareholders of the financial backers of Agua Zarca and other dams in Honduras - in accordance with their extra-territorial obligations, to stop financing projects which breach human rights in Latin America.
Furthermore, we regret and condemn the theft of the file containing the judicial details of the murder of Berta Caceres, a crime which took place amidst unclear events a few weeks ago in Tegucigalpa. We consider that a situation of this type represents a serious obstruction to justice.
Accordingly, we demand justice from the competent Honduran authorities and urgency in finding the perpetrators of these incidents, in this way making it possible to uncover the truth and apply the corresponding sanctions for the murder of Berta Caceres and all the Lenca and Tolupan leaders, peasants, women and students who have greatly influenced the social and spiritual conscience of the Honduran people and all the people in the world.
Stop crimes against life and people's rights!
Friends of the Earth International is the world's largest grassroots environmental network, uniting 74 national member groups and some 5,000 local activist groups on every continent. With over 2 million members and supporters around the world, FOEI campaigns on today's most urgent environmental and social issues.
LATEST NEWS
'The Smell of Death Is Everywhere': UN Staffers Issue SOS for Northern Gaza
"On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce," said UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
Oct 22, 2024
Staffers with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees issued a message of desperation to the international community on Tuesday as U.S.-armed Israeli forces continued their devastating and increasingly deadly assault on famine-stricken northern Gaza, besieging the area's hospitals, attacking shelters full of displaced people, and obstructing the delivery of critical aid.
Relaying reports from agency workers on the ground, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement that the people remaining in northern Gaza "are just waiting to die" amid squalid conditions, deprived of food, water, and medical treatment with nowhere safe to move.
"Nearly three weeks of non-stop bombardments from the Israeli forces as the death toll increases," wrote Philippe Lazzarini. "The smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble. Missions to clear the bodies or provide humanitarian assistance are denied."
"On behalf of our staff in northern Gaza, I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places," Lazzarini continued. "This is the bare minimum to save the lives of civilians who have nothing to do with this conflict. Cease-fire now."
Israeli forces have killed more than 600 people in northern Gaza over the past 17 days—likely an underestimate of the true death toll, given the difficulty of tallying casualties amid relentless bombing that has trapped many under the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings.
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has called on the U.N. to declare northern Gaza "a disaster zone that requires immediate action."
"Israel must be pressed to cease its attacks on civilians, allow the provision of life-saving emergency aid, and end its violent genocidal campaign," the group said.
Over the weekend, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories said that the Israeli military had denied "an urgent request from the United Nations to access North Gaza to assist in rescuing dozens of injured people trapped in rubble."
"In the past two weeks, Israeli forces increased their pressure on these hospitals to be evacuated, but patients had nowhere to go. Patients, medical staff, and displaced persons were injured," the official said. "At the Indonesian Hospital, two patients died due to a resulting power outage and lack of supplies; some medical staff had to flee for their lives. The facility is no longer operational."
One nurse at the Indonesian Hospital toldReuters that the Israeli army was "burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital
Meanwhile, Middle East Eyereported Monday that Israeli soldiers have been "systematically raiding schools" in northern Gaza and "marching out the displaced people sheltering there at gunpoint."
"According to witnesses, Israeli forces are separating men from their families and instructing women and children to flee southward," the outlet reported. "A video from Israel's state news broadcaster showed crowds of people expelled from the besieged Jabalia refugee camp attempting to cross a checkpoint."
Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, wrote Tuesday that what's happening in the region amounts to "genocide in the full sense of the word, with homes destroyed, shelters bombed, and displaced people forced to leave their homes and shelters."
"A short while ago, the occupation forces asked citizens to leave the Beit Lahia project area, which now includes the largest number of displaced people from all of the northern Gaza Strip," Shabat wrote.
The latest warnings about rapidly deteriorating conditions on the ground in northern Gaza came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for what his office characterized as "intensive discussions about the importance of ending the war in Gaza, returning the hostages to their families, and alleviating the suffering of the Palestinian people."
"You'd have a much better chance of doing all that from your desk in Washington by using your authority to enforce U.S. arms and aid law, as you should have months ago," Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, wrote in response to the stated goals of Blinken's Middle East visit.
Blinken departed for the trip amid sustained outrage over the revelation that he contradicted experts within his own department when he told Congress earlier this year that Israel was not impeding deliveries of U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza. U.S. law prohibits the federal government from sending military aid to countries obstructing American humanitarian assistance.
Earlier this month, after Israeli forces assailed the Gaza Strip with the help of U.S. weapons for more than a year, the Biden administration threatened to cut off military aid if Israel's government does not take "urgent and sustained actions" to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza within 30 days.
In response to a photo of a crowd of Palestinians in northern Gaza surrounded by rubble and bombed-out buildings, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wrote Monday, "I can't believe our country won't stop funding and enabling these war crimes."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel's Use of Human Shields in Gaza Sparks Calls for US Probe
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses," the head of one Muslim American advocacy group said.
Oct 21, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces' use of Palestinians—who are often handcuffed and forced to wear IDF uniforms—as human shields prompted the leading U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Monday to call on the Biden administration to investigate what experts say is a war crime by the No. 1 recipient of American military aid.
International law prohibits the use of combatants or civilians as human shields. However, numerous reports have emerged during Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza—which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case led by South Africa—of IDF troops forcing captured Palestinians, including children, to protect Israeli forces in life-threatening situations.
"The State Department and the Department of Justice must investigate these credible charges of widespread and systematic human rights abuses by military forces that receive weapons paid for by American taxpayers and used against a civilian population," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.
"These abuses, and the obvious and open ethnic cleansing of Gaza, violate our nation's laws," Awad added. "The Biden administration's complicity with this genocide stains our national reputation and will haunt our diplomats for generations to come when they are told to 'remember Gaza' whenever they bring up the subject of human rights."
International media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Britain's The Guardian, and The New York Times have reported how Israel uses abducted Palestinian militants and civilians to proceed ahead of IDF troops in underground tunnels and buildings in order to protect their captors during life-threatening missions.
In May, a report published by Defense for Children International-Palestine revealed that Palestinian minors are forced to walk ahead of IDF soldiers during dangerous raids. Subsequent Al Jazeera reports of a Palestinian strapped to the hood of an Israeli combat vehicle to deter attack and Gazans being sent into buildings and tunnels to ensure the locations weren't rigged with explosives sparked international outrage and initial IDF denials.
"It's hard to recognize them. They're usually wearing Israeli army uniforms, many of them are in their 20s, and they're always with Israeli soldiers of various ranks," Haaretzreported in August. But upon closer examination, "you see that most of them are wearing sneakers, not army boots. And their hands are cuffed behind their backs and their faces are full of fear."
According to an Al Jazeeraarticle published Sunday:
By dressing Palestinian civilians in Israeli military uniforms and casting them as combatants the Israeli military purposefully conceals their vulnerability. It deploys them as shields not to deter Palestinian fighters from striking Israeli soldiers, but rather to draw their fire and thus reveal their location, allowing the Israeli troops to launch a counterattack and kill the fighters. The moment these human shields, masked as soldiers, are sent into the tunnels, they are transformed from vulnerable civilians into fodder.
One 35-year-old Palestinian man, who declined to be identified by his real name for fear of his life, told The Guardian that "the Israeli soldiers put a GPS tracker on my hand and told me: 'If you try to run away, we will shoot you. We will know where you are.'"
"I was asked to go to knock on the doors of four houses and two schools and ask people to leave—women and children first and then the men," he added. "At one of the schools, the situation was very dangerous. I shouted to everyone in the school to leave quietly, but at that moment there was heavy shooting by the Israeli army and I thought I was going to die."
Former IDF soldiers told The New York Times that IDF commanders instructed them that "the lives of terrorists were worth less than those of Israelis—even though officers often concluded their detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charge."
Israel denies it uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, despite video evidence of IDF troops doing so in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank.
"The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them," the IDF said in August. "The protocols and orders have been clarified to the troops on the ground."
However, IDF troops have confirmed the practice.
"From what we understand it was a very widely used protocol, meaning there are hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who have been used as human shields," former IDF sniper Nadav Weiman, who is now a director at Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans' group that exposes war crimes, toldThe Guardian.
"Palestinians are being grabbed from humanitarian corridors inside Gaza... and then they're being brought to different units inside Gaza—regular infantry units, not special forces," Weiman said. "And then those Palestinians are being used as human shields to sweep tunnels and also houses. In some cases, they have a GoPro camera on their chest or on their head and in almost all of the cases, they are cuffed before they are taken into a tunnel or house to sweep and they are dressed in IDF uniform."
The Biden administration provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and shields its ally from international accountability by wielding its United Nations Security Council veto power to block cease-fire resolutions. Administration spokespeople have deflected questions about the IDF's use of human shields by deferring to Israeli investigations in which perpetrators are rarely punished.
In 2002, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the use of human shields in operations to quash the Second Intifada, or general uprising. Some IDF soldiers ignored the injunction, according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
In 2010, two staff sergeants in the Givati Brigade were convicted of forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open bags they thought might contain explosives during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead invasion of Gaza. The staff sergeants were slapped on the wrists with suspended sentences and demotions. Neither went to prison.
Michael Schmitt, a professor of international humanitarian law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, toldThe New York Times last week that "in most cases," what Israel is accused of "constitutes a war crime."
Keep ReadingShow Less
House Dems Push Biden to Fight for Global Media Access to Gaza
"It is imperative that the United States urge Israel to allow independent access for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability, and the fundamental principle of press freedom."
Oct 21, 2024
Over five dozen Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday urged the Biden administration to "take immediate action to advocate for unrestricted, independent media access" to the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have killed at least 42,603 people and injured another 99,795 since last October.
"It is imperative that the United States urge Israel to allow independent access for U.S. and international journalists, in the interest of transparency, accountability, and the fundamental principle of press freedom," the lawmakers—led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)— wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Since the right-wing Israeli government launched its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, the Biden administration and Congress have continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, despite allegations of war crimes and genocide, including in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice.
The lawmakers' letter says that "foreign media remains largely prohibited from entering the region, except for a few controlled trips arranged by the Israeli military. This effective ban on foreign reporting has placed an overwhelming burden on local journalists who are documenting the war they are living through. Tragically, at least 130 journalists have lost their lives since the start of the war, and those who remain face conditions of extreme hardship and danger."
Noting that the mortality rate for Gaza's media workers is over 10%, 75% of all reporters killed globally last year died after October 7, and just two months into the conflict the Committee to Protect Journalists called Gaza the "most dangerous ever" war zone for the press, McGovern and his colleagues wrote that "these staggering statistics underscore the critical importance of allowing independent journalists to document and report from the ground."
Israel has been accused of targeting journalists in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank, along with Lebanon, where it has ramped up attacks against the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Hamas-governed strip.
"At a time when reliable information is more critical than ever, the restrictions on foreign reporting undermine the very foundation of press freedom and democratic accountability," the House Democrats argued. "A free press is essential to ensuring that the world can bear witness to the realities on the ground and hold all parties accountable."
The letter is signed by 65 House members, including the group that has been demanding a cease-fire since last October as well as Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
Throughout the Israeli assault on Gaza, human rights and press freedom groups have blasted both the ban on foreign reporting and Israel's killing of the enclave's local journalists. Corporate outlets—particularly in the United States—have also
faced criticism over their war coverage, with some charging that Western media are "enabling" genocide.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular