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human rights
Governments Must Act Like Access to Water Is a Human Right, Because It Is
The responsibility to protect access to clean water must guide their decisions on data centers, carbon capture and storage facilities, and other large industrial projects.
Aug 14, 2026
Increasingly, communities are facing threats to clean water from large industrial projects such as data centers and carbon capture and storage, or CCS, facilities that are being proposed and constructed in communities across the United States. The question is how should decisions about these facilities be made? Should government officials privilege capital and financial investments? Should they balance investment with other considerations such as noise, water, and energy costs?
Of all the issues raised by these large projects, water is one of the most crucial for the simple reason that we cannot live without water. Given this necessity, access to clean water must be treated as a human right with governments charged with the ethical responsibility to serve as the trustees of water to protect it for present and future generations. This responsibility to protect access to clean water as a human right must guide their decisions on data centers and CCS facilities and other large industrial projects.
Data centers are buildings, sometimes the size of large warehouses, that can contain hundreds of thousands of computer chips that provide processing and storage for online data including data used for energy-intensive artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, as well as less energy-intensive activities such as storing websites and other data. Carbon capture and storage facilities capture carbon dioxide emitted from industrial facilities and store it underground to prevent the CO2 from escaping into the atmosphere where it would contribute to climate change. Carbon capture facilities can include factory-size machinery that removes carbon dioxide from industrial air emissions, pipelines that transport the CO2, and underground storage repositories. Data centers and carbon capture and storage facilities typically consume large amounts of energy and water. They commonly also have toxic emissions, posing further risks to air, water, and health.
People have a human right to a clean environment—an idea recognized by the United Nations and enshrined in the constitutions of multiple states including Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania. The provisions from Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania explicitly mention the importance of protecting water supplies. Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment says, for example: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people."
Current projects being rushed through city councils or county boards, cloaked in non-disclosure agreements and granted tax credits, deny the public the right to full information about the project and undermine the ability of governments to fulfill its public trust duties.
Most constitutions, like Pennsylvania’s that contain the human right to a clean environment have a parallel provision, that asserts the responsibility of government to serve as the trustee of the commons or natural resources. For purposes of an ordinance on water, government, as the trustee of water, has a duty to make decisions that guarantee water quality and quantity now and into the future for the people within its jurisdiction.
If access to adequate, clean water is a human right—and given the uncertainty about water quantity and quality in light of unstable climate and weather patterns, increasing demands, and aging infrastructure—arguably the most appropriate decision-making tool for governments to use to fulfill its trustee responsibilities is the precautionary principle. The principle stands for the premise that we should take action, even in the face of scientific uncertainty, to prevent harm by
- Setting goals;
- Heeding early warnings;
- Exploring alternatives to potentially harmful actions;
- Placing the burden of proof on proponents of an activity rather than on those who might be disadvantaged; and
- Using democratic processes to carry out and enforce the principle—including the public’s right to free, prior, and informed consent.
This principle is the commonsense idea behind many adages: “Better safe than sorry.” “Look before you leap.” “First do no harm.”
One step in implementing the precautionary principle to protect water requires special focus: the public’s right to give free, prior, and informed consent to projects that will impact water quantity and quality. The consent of the governed is fundamental to democracy as expressed in documents dating back to the Declaration of Independence. Current projects being rushed through city councils or county boards, cloaked in non-disclosure agreements and granted tax credits, deny the public the right to full information about the project and undermine the ability of governments to fulfill its public trust duties.
By protecting local water supplies that may be threatened by these new, energy- and water- intensive uses, communities can help ensure that our most important natural resource remains clean and abundant for generations yet to come.
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Trump Admin Faces Legal Challenge in Hemispheric Court Over ICE Protest Crackdown
This is the first challenge against the Trump administration on protest crackdowns by an international court, and one of the first legal challenges generally.
Aug 08, 2026
Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, at the Organization of American States, a body historically committed to investigating crimes against humanity committed by governments in the Americas, held a hearing in Washington, DC against the Trump administration for its treatment of protests held against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, crackdowns in the US.
The delegation, represented by Thomas Becker and Nicholas Rodelo, for the University Network for Human Rights, presented evidence of attacks of rights to free assembly and free expression by the Trump administration.
Becker has previously successfully prosecuted a civil lawsuit against former Bolivian President and US ally, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, over 2003 crackdowns and extrajudicial killings of protesters.
This is the first challenge against the Trump administration on protest crackdowns by an international court, and one of the first legal challenges generally. Speakers included Antonio Romanucci, the attorney representing the family of Renee Good, and former counsel of George Floyd; Reverend David Black, who was struck in the head by federal agents at the Broadview Detention Facility; and Naureen Shah, the director of government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Speakers and observers at the hearing argued that the commission must be empowered to investigate fully and act decisively, warning that the region is entering a new era of authoritarianism even as many of its democracies remain young and fragile.
During the hearing, video evidence and testimony were presented documenting the alleged abuses, prompting a response from State Department lawyers who argued that the incidents represented isolated cases still under investigation, that the United States has rights the commission should respect, and that the IACHR ought to focus its attention elsewhere in the hemisphere, a suggestion that drew scrutiny given that the US has faced far fewer cases before the commission than many other member states.
State Department representatives further contended that federal agents operating under significant stress could not be expected to act "perfectly," and maintained that any agents found to have violated standards would face penalties, though they were unable to answer specific questions from commissioners about ongoing cases or offer evidence of any such penalties actually being imposed, saying only that they would "write down" the questions and respond later.
The commission and the civil society delegation renewed a request—thus far denied by Washington—for an IACHR delegation to visit the United States, likely Chicago, to assess conditions on the ground.
Petitioners also singled out National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) as a central mechanism of the crackdown, arguing it chills freedom of expression by recasting protesters and dissidents, including anti-capitalist, "anti-Christian," and anti-fascist activists, as "terrorists." Blacklists of prominent leftist actors have also been compiled, with state resources used to prosecute them. "This is the new McCarthyism," the delegation added.
They pointed out that resources once dedicated to investigating internal abuse by immigration enforcement agents have instead been slashed, citing an internal FBI memo halting investigations into Department of Homeland Security officers, and that officials tasked with oversight are now regarded within the agencies as "internal adversaries" rather than watchdogs.
"These are the exact same tactics used by Latin American dictatorships from the 1970s," said Becker. "These tactics have been propped up by the US for decades, and are now coming back here, to be used against Americans," he added. The commission was created in the wake of the rise of military dictatorships in Latin America, backed by the US during the Cold War, including Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Rafael Videla in Argentina, and Hugo Banzer in Bolivia.
Becker also argued, "This is not the first time that agents backed by the US government target priests," alluding to the past abuses and killings of religious opposition leaders in Central America.
Speaking to Drop Site News, Dr. James Cavallaro, former president of IACHR and law faculty at Columbia, Stanford, and Harvard, added that "there is a conviction from those in power that they can suppress dissent" and rule through power and violence to "impose their ideology," where "opposition must be crushed."
This is the first time the commission has held any hearing of this type concerning domestic repression against the US government, which was the main force behind the founding and funding of the IACHR and the Organization of American States (OAS). “For years, the commission has heard testimony about attacks on protesters carried out by some of the region’s most repressive dictatorships. Now, it is the United States that will be called to answer for these abuses,” said Cavallaro.
The US government, including figures in the current administration like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has historically been supportive of the IACHR and the OAS, but may see the IACHR as a new target, as it continues its campaign against international legal organizations including the International Criminal Court.
Locke Bowman, attorney for Reverend David Black, shared, "What happened to Rev. Black was emblematic of the physical abuse that ICE and CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] officers directed at conscientious folks in Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere around the country who bore witness to the Trump administration's cruel immigration policies with their voices, their prayers, and their cellphone cameras."
He added: "There has been no accountability whatsoever for the officers responsible for the pervasive violations of free speech and human dignity. We turn to the Inter-American Commission to ask that the commission join us in demanding accountability."
At the hearing, the University Network for Human Rights also published a detailed report, submitted as part of its formal petition to the commission, laying out documented instances of excessive force, free expression violations, and lack of accountability tied to the crackdown on ICE protests.
The commission is now expected to weigh whether the evidence and testimony presented warrant further inquiry, including a possible on-the-ground visit to the United States, before issuing findings or referring the matter further within the inter-American human rights system.
The last hearing against the US government, sponsored by the ACLU, was held in the context of dozens of extrajudicial killings by US forces in the Caribbean and Pacific, against "drug boats," which experts say violate US and international law, violate local sovereignty, and kill civilians without due process, all without helping to solve the drug crisis. Previously, the IACHR had held proceedings in the context of detainee treatment at Guantánamo Bay, among other cases.
Speakers and observers at the hearing argued that the commission must be empowered to investigate fully and act decisively, warning that the region is entering a new era of authoritarianism even as many of its democracies remain young and fragile. Crime and migration are increasingly being used as pretexts to suspend democratic norms, enabling interference in elections; extrajudicial killings; bans on opposition parties; declared states of exception; suspended protest rights; the jailing of dissidents; militarized policing; and the dismantling of checks on military, intelligence, and presidential power.
This is the most serious test facing democracy in Latin America since the Cold War, with echoes of the Reagan-era doctrine that once propped up authoritarian allies across the region. Now, the United States is again playing that role, installing, arming, backing, and protecting governments that suppress dissent, and reaching for sanctions, tariffs, and even support for coups to keep them in power.
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A US Passport Should Not Shield Violence in the West Bank
If an American participates in organized violence against civilians abroad, that person should be investigated. If evidence supports it, they should be prosecuted under applicable US law.
Aug 04, 2026
In a rare quiet moment inside the resuscitation room at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, I stood beside a young Palestinian man helping us treat waves of wounded children. He worked with calm precision. Focused. Unflinching.
Then he told me about his brother. Beaten nearly to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Not once. Repeatedly. Ribs broken. Face shattered. The attacks ended only when his family fled the land they had farmed for generations.
“They wanted us gone,” he said. Some of the men who carry out this violence hold United States passports.
They live under American law. They vote in American elections. Then they travel abroad and take part in acts that, in any other context, would be recognized without hesitation: assault, arson, organized racial violence. Homes burned. Crops destroyed. Families driven off land.
An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border.
And then they return. They pass through US customs. They resume their lives. No charges. No investigation. No meaningful consequence.
This is not an abstraction. Human rights organizations, Israeli and international alike, have documented repeated incidents of settler violence in the West Bank: physical attacks on civilians, destruction of agricultural land, the burning of homes and olive groves, often carried out with little immediate accountability.
Some of those involved are Americans. Under US law, citizenship is extraordinarily difficult to revoke. The Supreme Court has made that clear. But citizenship is not the only instrument of accountability, and treating it as such allows something far worse to persist: impunity.
If an American participates in organized violence against civilians abroad, that person should be investigated. If evidence supports it, they should be prosecuted under applicable US law. If their actions meet the threshold of coordinated or systematic violence, then sanctions, asset restrictions, and limits on international travel should follow.
A passport should not function as a safe harbor.
In 2024, the United States took limited steps to sanction individuals and entities linked to settler violence. It was an acknowledgment, however modest, that this problem exists. In early 2025, that framework was dismantled.
The message was clear. Even minimal accountability was negotiable.
Meanwhile, the violence continues. This is where the question becomes unavoidable.
What does it mean for Israel, a country that defines itself as a democracy under law, to tolerate or fail to prevent organized violence by settlers against civilians in the West Bank?
And what does it mean for the United States to allow its own citizens to participate in that violence and return home untouched?
These are not separate questions. They are reflections of the same failure.
An American who beats a man because of his ethnicity, drives him from his home, and destroys the means by which his family survives is not transformed into something else by crossing a border. Geography does not dilute the crime. It only obscures it.
If that same act occurred in the United States, there would be no ambiguity in how it is described or prosecuted.
When it occurs in the West Bank as part of a broader pattern of displacement, it demands the same clarity.
The tools for accountability already exist. Federal statutes governing violent crime, conspiracy, and, in certain cases, war crimes. Sanctions authorities. Civil liability. Immigration and travel restrictions.
What is missing is not law. It is willingness.
Impunity is not an accident here. It is a decision, made repeatedly, on both sides of the ocean.
The man I met in Gaza was not asking for revenge. He was asking for the violence to stop. He was asking for a form of justice that does not end at a checkpoint or a border crossing.
A United States passport should carry weight. It should represent a commitment to law, not an escape from it.
Right now, in too many cases, it does the opposite. And everyone involved knows it.
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Is the United Nations About to Be Pushed Off a Cliff?
Could the irrationality, lack of knowledge, and limited vision of world leaders destroy the hopes that the world’s people have invested in the UN?
Aug 04, 2026
Currently we live in a world bristling with nuclear and conventional weapons—with a potential destructiveness unprecedented in history. A nuclear war, for example, would largely be over in one hour, with each second equivalent in destruction to World War II.
Meanwhile, our security is increasingly threatened by skyrocketing global military expenditure at the same time as the United Nation’s capacity to maintain peace is being undermined by member states starving the organization of funds.
The United Nations and its Prescription for a Better World
In the aftermath of two world wars, there was considerable hope that humanity would learn its lesson and that each would be “the war to end all wars.” Indeed, the United Nations was created for just this purpose, as stated in the Preamble to its Charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…” But hope was not enough.
The Charter’s prescription for preventing violent conflict was a solid one. The states that joined the organization agreed, as an obligation of membership, to resolve their disputes peacefully and to refrain from the threat or use of force against one another.
The UN of today is staggering under the unparalleled expectation that it should be able to deal effectively with a multiplicity of extremely complex problems and that it should somehow be able to do so with resources that are woefully inadequate.
The prescription went beyond the peaceful settlement of disputes to address the root causes of conflict and create conditions for sustainable peace, pledging “to reaffirm our faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…”
But before this hopeful blueprint could get off the drawing board, a new danger to global peace and security arose:
As the Charter was being negotiated and signed in San Francisco, the atomic bomb was being developed in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a thousand miles away… The first atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, just forty-one days after the Charter was signed. By the time the United Nations was established on 24 October 1945, the world that it was to serve had changed in fundamental ways.
Indeed, for the next 45 years, the nuclear threat and the Cold War hung like a pall over the UN, greatly distorting the hopes invested in it by the world’s peoples.
When the Cold War suddenly ended, its legacy of abuse and neglect was not easily swept away. One superpower had bankrupted itself in the headlong race toward military superiority, and the other had spent vast resources developing expensive nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, large segments of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty and were malnourished, unhealthy, and undereducated. The neglect of demographic and environmental problems led to a whole host of security threats, as underdevelopment, economic stagnation, and rising expectations generated conditions for protest, violence, and intrastate war. There were also new threats, as global warming; deforestation; desertification; degradation of air, soil and water; and loss of biodiversity endangered the health of the planet itself.
In the power vacuum following the Cold War, the UN was no longer sidelined but, instead, required to take center stage. In a short space of time, the expectations, demands, and responsibilities placed on the organization increased dramatically. An organization whose peacekeeping budget was no greater than the budgets of the New York City police and fire departments was asked to become the world’s police and fire department. At the same time, some who clamored for it to play this enhanced role continued to be late in payment of their dues or to withhold them altogether.
The UN of today is staggering under the unparalleled expectation that it should be able to deal effectively with a multiplicity of extremely complex problems and that it should somehow be able to do so with resources that are woefully inadequate.
Even so, over its 81 years, the UN has had many successes, exemplified by the 12 Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to various parts of the organization. Although detailing its work is well beyond the scope of this article, mentioning just a few achievements can provide some context.
At the time of the UN’s creation, almost one-third of the world’s population (750 million people) were under the yoke of colonial rule. Due to UN decolonization efforts, they are now citizens of 80 independent states and UN membership has grown from 51 to 193.
The UN operates at two levels. At the inter-governmental level, it offers venues (through the General Assembly and its committees, the Economic and Social Council and the Security Council) for member states to discuss international problems and take action, when possible. In a world dominated by Westphalian states, whose interests are not always aligned, multilateral decision-making is necessarily slow and cumbersome. But there are many instances where agreements have had far-reaching consequences. An example is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its covenants, as well as the many subsequent human rights instruments, including the establishment of mechanisms to monitor and assist their implementation.
Another example is the 2015 Sustainable Development goals and targets, including, “no poverty;” “zero hunger;” “good health and well-being;” “quality education;” “gender equality;” “clean water and sanitation;” “climate action;” “peace, justice, and strong institutions;” and nine others.
UN thematic conferences offer another opportunity for inter-governmental dialogue, with potentially constructive outcomes on issues such as climate change, HIV/AIDs, population and development, women and gender equality, racism, and others.
In a parallel process, the secretary-general, the Secretariat and its departments, as well as UN funds, programmes, and specialized agencies (i.e., the World Food Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, and many others) fulfill their mandates and implement resolutions of the General Assembly or Security Council around the world.
Throughout the UN’s existence, efforts in preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, post-conflict peacebuilding, and peace enforcement have prevented and resolved many crises and conflicts. Local UN disarmament initiatives have ensured that conflicts don’t reoccur and international efforts have contributed to nuclear non-proliferation, and to outlawing and monitoring of biological and chemical weapons. Humanitarian efforts have prevented or contained famines, refugee flows, and pandemics. Smallpox has been eradicated, and the end of polio is near. The number of people living in extreme poverty has been halved, access to schooling has massively increased, and maternal mortality slashed. The UN has also played a major role in advancing gender equality.
The International Court of Justice (also part of the UN) has helped create and strengthen international law by providing legally-binding judgments in a host of cases. Treaties, negotiated via the UN, have established new international law, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which provides a legal framework for marine and maritime activities.
The UN is also involved in many less recognized efforts, including improving agricultural productivity; codifying principles and techniques of international air navigation; labor issues; standardizing and regulating international telecommunications; protecting intellectual property; offering assistance on migration; promoting peaceful nuclear energy and inhibiting its military use; verifying adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention; and many others.
But the UN’s most important achievement, as Secretary-General António Guterres has argued, is: “Eight decades later, one can draw a direct line between the creation of the United Nations and the prevention of a third world war.”
Meanwhile, World Military Expenditure Increases, as Do Conflicts
Even after the Cold War, states continue to pursue the flawed policy of deterrence and to equate military might with security, in spite of research that arms races increase the likelihood of war and evidence that military spending does not decrease conflict—as the most recent data from the world’s leading source of information on organized violence show.
In 2025, violent conflicts increased to 65, the highest since data collection began in 1946. While most were intrastate conflict, there is also a sharp increase in interstate conflict: “The first decade of the 2000s saw 8 interstate conflicts, while the 2010s saw 12. The 2020s have thus far seen 22.”
Fatalities also increased sharply in 2025 to the second highest since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The war between Russia and Ukraine was the deadliest in the world for the third consecutive year.
The world’s global military expenditure also increased in 2025 for the 11th consecutive year—to an astonishing 2.9 trillion dollars. If similar increases continue, and NATO countries enlarge their expenditure to 5% as pledged, global military spending could reach 6.6 trillion by 2035—five times the level at the end of the Cold War.
Do we really want or need more weapons and more wars? Shouldn’t we, instead, choose cooperative security, collective security, and human security, as represented by the United Nations?
The current US military budget is a jaw-dropping $1 trillion, but the Trump administration is requesting a whopping increase to $1.5 trillion for 2027. Thus, if global military expenditure increases as predicted, the US $1.5 trillion (if approved) would account for nearly half of the entire world’s military expenditure.
Although the US government frames security threats from China and Russia as the main reason for its sky-high military budget, Russia’s military expenditure for 2025 was $190 billion, less than one-fifth of that of the US. China, the world’s second largest military spender, was $336 billion—about one-third of the US military budget.
As the secretary-general concludes, “Despite rising expenditures… global security has continued to deteriorate, calling into question the effectiveness of more military spending to enhance security.”
Do we really want or need more weapons and more wars? Shouldn’t we, instead, choose cooperative security, collective security, and human security, as represented by the United Nations?
Regrettably, we haven’t. Because of unpaid bills from 2025, in January 2026, Guterres sent a letter to member states warning of “imminent financial collapse” if dues were not paid on time. By February 8, the due date for membership contributions to the regular budget, only 55 countries had paid and, even now, neither the US nor China, the UN’s biggest contributors, have paid all of their dues. In July, the UN controller reported: “We don’t have enough cash beyond August. Unless its big donors step up, the UN will have to delay other payments to afford its High-Level Week of the General Assembly” (September 22-28 this year). To address last year’s shortfall, the UN’s regular budget was reduced by 15% in 2026 to 3.45 billion—making the world’s military expenditure 840 times that of the UN regular budget.
In a recent review of where the international order is headed, Brookings scholars conclude, “Whether the Trump administration moves aggressively enough to shatter what’s left of the multilateral order remains to be seen; there’s no evidence of what would replace it beyond unfettered American power.”
However, as A New Agenda for Peace notes: “War is always a choice… if war is a choice, peace can be too. It is time for a recommitment to peace.” It is also time to commit to revitalizing and reforming the United Nations to meet the needs of the future. As the UN secretary-general has stated, “Rebalancing global priorities... is an imperative for humanity to survive.”
Of course, this also depends on the informed participation of citizens and civil society (that means us), who must ensure that the public resources we give our governments to spend on our behalf are used in ways that bring us genuine security. We can’t let the world’s misguided leaders throw the United Nations off the cliff—and, while we’re at it, we must also ensure that we don’t sleepwalk into Armageddon.
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LA Must Stop Bidding for Mega Sports Events
The city’s FIFA World Cup experience raises questions about the costs and benefits of hosting.
Jul 22, 2026
The FIFA World Cup is over, but with the 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympics on the horizon, Los Angeles’ mega-event spree is just beginning. Paul Krekorian, a former LA City councilmember and now head of the mayor’s Office of Major Events, has declared the World Cup a triumph for the city.
“Even some of the naysayers about the ’28 [Olympic] games,” he told The New York Times, “will have to look at the unmitigated success of the World Cup here in Los Angeles and say, 'OK, now I understand what you’ve been talking about, when you talk about the benefit of major events. Now I get how this is beneficial to Angelenos.'”
As one of those so-called “naysayers,” I disagree. LA’s World Cup experience reinforces concerns about the city’s ongoing efforts to bring one sports mega event after another to the region. Hosting major events always gobbles up public resources that could otherwise be directed toward pressing needs, while host cities under pressure to sparkle on camera often violate residents’ rights.
The people paid to organize these big events, like Krekorian, love to repeat myths about mega-event benefits while pooh-poohing questions about the costs. But saying, "No" to more mega events is saying, "Yes’ to a city that puts residents ahead of corporate sponsors. It’s saying, "Yes" to a city that puts long-term planning ahead of last-minute scrambling.
The host committee’s human rights listicle fails to acknowledge that mega events’ own massive security apparatuses often threaten residents’ rights and safety.
Bidding to host one major sports event after another is the explicit goal of the LA Sports and Entertainment Commission (LASEC), a little-known but influential organization that acts as the local host committee for both the FIFA World Cup and the Super Bowl.
As LA’s World Cup host committee, LASEC has refused to publish the host city contract with FIFA. That means Angelenos do not know who exactly is paying—and how much they’re paying—for the significant additional city and county-run security, transportation, and sanitation services that come with hosting. Refusing to disclose that information is shady business. What is LASEC hiding? (Probably at least the fact that taxpayers are footing a large bill.) If LASEC leaders show such little regard for basic transparency, why should residents allow them to continue shaping the region’s commitments?
Because World Cup hosts have a record of violating human rights as they prepare for and host the mega event, each 2026 host committee was supposed to develop a plan to proactively protect human rights. LA’s long-overdue “plan” turned out to be a list of existing laws and hotlines. Several local advocacy groups have concluded that human rights were an afterthought for LASEC.
The host committee’s human rights listicle fails to acknowledge that mega events’ own massive security apparatuses often threaten residents’ rights and safety. On the day of the first game in the US, for example, snipers in military fatigues sat on rooftops about a mile from the temporarily renamed “Los Angeles Stadium,” pointing rifles down in the direction of Black and Latino kids playing soccer at a street festival. Over LA’s eight game days, the area around the stadium was teeming with local, state, and federal police. Some prevented local residents from accessing their own homes; some hassled and ticketed street vendors; and others monitored the area’s extensive (and expanding) AI-powered surveillance systems, technology that has been denounced by privacy and human rights organizations. Before and during the World Cup, federal agents conducted multiple raids on a LA city park, one where homelessness and drug use are visible. The raids allegedly targeted drug trafficking networks but have had the effects of displacing vulnerable individuals and disrupting essential harm reduction services. It seems likely these spectacular policing operations were timed with the park’s World Cup watch parties in mind.
The militarization of relatively small urban areas for the World Cup offers us just a taste of the much larger, more invasive operations Angelenos can expect to see with the 2028 Olympics, as police forces try to “secure” more of the region. Unfortunately, like LASEC, LA28 is showing little appetite to take human rights seriously. Its own months-late “human rights strategy” suggests unsheltered Angelenos will be displaced from event areas, a recipe for trampling on human rights. The strategy does not mention Immigration and Customs Enforcement once, even though ICE will be a core part of Olympic security operations. While there were few reports of ICE around the Los Angeles Stadium for the World Cup, ICE arrests surged across LA and the nation while we consumed the beautiful game. ICE’s efforts will be more concentrated on LA for the Olympics.
Krekorian talks up the benefits of hosting major events. The meager “legacy” projects promoted by LA’s World Cup Host Committee—26 community grants, two volunteer days, and one soccer clinic—reflects a paradigm shift from past World Cup and Olympic host cities that promised large-scale urban transformation as legacy projects. While it’s good that LA leaders aren’t overpromising at the same scale and public expense, we’re now left with a new question: Without marquee legacy investments, what justifies the financial and social costs of hosting?
LASEC argues that mega events bring lasting economic benefits, but these claims have been consistently debunked by economists. The assertion that events generate a long-term tourism boost? There’s little evidence of that for already popular destinations like LA. The promise of a short-term bump in tourist spending? Mega events attract sports-loving tourists but actually deter other potential visitors. So while attendees spend a lot of money at stadiums and multinational hotels, other cultural attractions and businesses struggle during big events. Just ask the Louvre about the Paris 2024 Olympics. During this World Cup, much like for the 2022 Super Bowl, the owners and staff of several local businesses near the Los Angeles Stadium told me game days were bad for business, as their regular customers stayed away to avoid chaotic traffic.
Beyond one-off grants and volunteer days, LA’s World Cup “legacy” boils down to intangibles, like the moments of collective effervescence and the sense of witnessing history. These intangibles are why I love watching the World Cup. But they do not justify the costs of hosting.
LASEC is unwilling to be transparent with the public and uninterested in grappling seriously with human rights concerns. This World Cup has not demonstrated that mega events generate substantive benefits that warrant the immense expenditure of city and county resources. LA must put a stop to LASEC’s plans to continue diverting public resources to one mega event after another.
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Genocide in Gaza Means Empty Seats at the 2026 World Cup
Will there be any tributes for the 567 Palestinian footballers reportedly killed in Gaza since October 2023?
Jul 18, 2026
The world has united for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Stadiums have been filled with songs, flags, and the shared joy that football uniquely creates. Millions celebrate the beauty of a sport that claims to unite humanity across borders, languages, and politics.
But with the final game approaching, a question hangs heavily over the tournament: Will there be any tributes for the 567 Palestinian footballers reportedly killed in Gaza since October 2023?
The latest name on that list is Saleem Al-Ashqar, a Palestinian goalkeeper from Al-Qarara, near Khan Younis. He was 32 years old. According to reports, he was not on a battlefield. He was riding a motorcycle, searching for cooking gas. He had married only months earlier, in January 2026, and was waiting for the birth of his first child. Israeli forces shot and killed him.
In February 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, FIFA acted with remarkable speed. Within days, Russia was suspended from international competition and excluded from World Cup qualification. The decision came from widespread recognition that sport could not be separated from a major violation of international law and human suffering. FIFA described it as necessary to protect the integrity of football and to stand against violence.
When the final whistle blows at the 2026 World Cup, millions of people will celebrate the beauty of the game. They should also remember those who were denied the chance to keep playing it.
But if that principle applied to Russia, why does it not apply consistently elsewhere?
For nearly three years, international organizations, human rights groups, United Nations experts, and legal bodies have documented immense civilian suffering in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Homes, schools, hospitals, universities, and cultural institutions have been destroyed. The sporting sector has not been spared. Football fields have become rubble, sports facilities have been damaged and destroyed. Coaches, referees, administrators, and players have lost their lives. Despite all of this, the Israel Football Association remains a full FIFA member.
The consequences of this selectivity are devastating for Palestinian footballers. Their deaths rarely make international headlines. Their names are seldom known beyond their communities. The destruction of Gaza's sporting infrastructure receives little attention compared with transfer rumors, sponsorship deals, and tournament news.
Imagine a World Cup qualifying group in which half the players were dead. Imagine a national league where stadiums no longer exist. Imagine trying to explain to a child why their favorite goalkeeper will never play again because he was killed while searching for fuel to cook a meal.
Football is built on memory. Every World Cup honors the past as we remember legends who lifted trophies decades ago. Stadiums regularly hold moments of silence for victims of disasters, terrorism, and war. We place black armbands on captains’ sleeves because the sport understands that you cannot simply ignore loss.
Now that 567 footballers are gone, will we have a moment of silence? Will giant screens display their names? Will commentators mention that an entire generation of Palestinian players was cut down before it had the chance to compete? Or will the tournament proceed as though those lives never existed?
Tributes matter because they acknowledge humanity. They tell grieving families that the world saw their loved ones and that their deaths are not being erased.
If FIFA is unwilling to suspend the Israel Football Association, it should at the very least publicly recognize the Palestinian footballers who have been killed and commit to rebuilding the sporting infrastructure that has been destroyed. Their silence is a choice, and it speaks volumes.
When the final whistle blows at the 2026 World Cup, millions of people will celebrate the beauty of the game. They should also remember those who were denied the chance to keep playing it. The empty seats belong to them.
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Beware: Trump's Attack on Cuba Is Only Bound to Escalate
Americans need to be vigilant. The pretext for an invasion is being written in real time.
Jul 17, 2026
The federal indictment of Raúl Castro on decades-old charges is just the latest escalation in a long-running US campaign to justify invading Cuba.
The case against the 95-year-old former Cuban president — based on his alleged involvement in the downing of two planes in 1996 — comes in a year of intensified anti-Cuban policy that has steadily built since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term.
For many on the island, the Obama presidency had felt like a real turning point in US-Cuban relations.
“The Cuba of 2015, 2016, was quite different than the Cuba we are living in now,” Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist at the US-based news outlet Belly of the Beast, tells In These Times and Foreign Policy in Focus. “For the first time in my life my friends weren’t thinking of leaving Cuba in order to have a better future.”
The Obama administration’s steps toward normalization, underscored by the restoration of diplomatic ties and an easing of the blockade between 2014 and 2016, didn’t last long though. The first Trump administration not only rolled back progress made under Obama, but actually tightened the sanctions regime even further.
Under Trump, Cuba was re-added to the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, which imposes penalties on other countries that trade with the island nation. US diplomatic personnel were pulled out of the US embassy in Cuba following baseless conspiracies about “Havana Syndrome.” And perhaps most damagingly, Trump lifted the suspension of Title III of the Helms Burton Act.
This last move opened the floodgates for Americans who had claims to property nationalized after the 1959 Cuban Revolution to sue companies for doing business on that property, hamstringing the economy even further.
“That scared a lot of people,” Oliva Fernández says.
The election of President Joe Biden did not change things, even though he had been a central player in the Obama White House. Biden’s feeble effort to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism — less than a week before Trump was re-inaugurated — is emblematic of an administration that did too little, too late.
“Biden didn’t do anything, he didn’t lift a finger,” Oliva Fernández says. “There was no difference between Trump and Biden policy on Cuba.”
Trump’s second term has taken America’s anti-Cuba policies even further.
In January, the administration declared the Cuban government posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. This designation, based on familiar yet baseless accusations of collusion with Russia, China, Hamas, and Hezbollah, has been devastating for the island because it created a secondary tariff system against any country selling or providing oil to Cuba.
In the six months since that executive order, only one tanker — the Russian ship Anatoly Kolodkin — has delivered fuel to Cuba. Over that period of time, the people of Cuba have dealt with rolling blackouts and a near collapse of the nation’s healthcare system.
In May, another executive order by President Trump imposed new sanctions targeting foreign individuals and businesses that engage with Cuba economically.
Then came the indictment against Raúl Castro, which Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche implied could be enforced by the US military. That threat carries more weight after the illegal US capture of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela early this year. Maduro was indicted in 2020 — the final year of the first Trump administration — before the US bombed Venezuela and captured him in 2025, the first year of the second Trump administration.
“The decision to indict Raúl Castro is a pretext that’s prompting fears of a Venezuela-like scenario via leadership decapitation,” Oliva Fernández says.
On May 20, the same day the indictment was filed, the American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was deployed to the Caribbean, increasing the possibility of coming military action.
Meanwhile, mainstream US media has been busy setting the stage for a potential military move against Cuba. In May, for example, Axios ran a report citing “classified intelligence” for a claim that the Cuban has been buying drones for a potential upcoming attack on America’s military base at Guantanamo Bay. Other recent stories in the Wall Street Journal and CBS News also raise the possibility of armed conflict.
The accusation of drone purchases for possible military action follows a familiar script of creating a pretext for military aggression. “It’s the same recipe they have been feeding the American people from Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan,” Oliva Fernández says.
In an interview on Democracy Now! last month, Princeton University historian Ada Ferrer said, “In terms of invading, Trump has been threatening that since January, since the Maduro operation…I have no doubt Trump would do that if he thought it would work.”
And while the Trump administration has accelerated this aggression toward Cuba, US foreign policy has been building toward this posture for decades. Since the overthrow of the US-allied Batista regime during the Cuban revolution of 1959, successive US presidential administrations have relentlessly tried to unseat the communist government. Beyond the economic embargo, the US has been behind multiple coup attempts such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and covertly supported government opposition figures.
In the face of the most recent aggression, some Americans — including some Cuban Americans — have been organizing to prevent an invasion. In February, for example, hundreds of activists mobilized under the banner of the Nuestra América Convoy to break the siege by flying to Cuba to deliver food, medicine, and solar panels to alleviate the effects of the oil embargo.
An invasion of Cuba would be a disaster for both the residents of the island and the American public. President Miguel Díaz-Canal has pledged that any incursion would be met with “a struggle.”
“We will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die,” Díaz-Canal told NBC News. A military conflict would only worsen the existing energy and food crises on the island, and likely lead to casualties from the type of bombing campaign the US has recently deployed in Venezuela and Iran.
With working people already wracked by a high cost of living, the war in Iran, and a Pentagon budget that now tops $1 trillion, polls show over half of Americans would oppose military action against Cuba. The cost of opening yet another front in the US’s imperial wars would be borne by the public.
That’s why Americans need to be vigilant. The pretext for an invasion is being written in real time. We have the power to push back against these war-mongering narratives, denying public support for an invasion.
This article was jointly published by In These Times Magazine and Foreign Policy In Focus.
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'Justice Has Failed Us Here in Guatemala': A Family Fights for Accountability
More than 44 years have now passed since Guatemalan state forces abducted Luz Leticia; every day since, her sisters have fought to preserve the truth and dignity of her life while demanding answers.
Jul 12, 2026
Under the beating sun on the morning of June 21, Mirtala del Rosario Hernández Agustín joins families of the disappeared and members of organizations including the Association of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared in Guatemala, or FAMDEGUA, and Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence, or HIJOS, in Guatemala City’s Plaza de la Constitución to commemorate the National Day Against Enforced Disappearances.
“We dream of a different Guatemala, and we fight for it. We cannot sit back and cross our arms. We have a person detained and disappeared.” Mirtala’s voice carries across the plaza. Behind her sit more than 400 empty chairs, each bearing the portrait of someone forcibly disappeared during Guatemala’s 36-year internal armed conflict. “I am the sister of Luz Leticia Hernández Agustín,” she continues. “To have peace in my heart, to be able to say we’ve been heard, we need my sister's remains returned.”
More than 44 years have now passed since Guatemalan state forces abducted Luz Leticia on November 22, 1982. It was her 25th birthday. And it was the last time she was seen.
Yet her sisters, Marta and Mirtala, refused to let her vanish completely. Every day since, they have fought to preserve the truth and dignity of Luz Leticia’s life while demanding answers not only for her, but for the tens of thousands who were disappeared, tortured, and killed during Guatemala’s US-backed campaign of state terror and genocide.
No amount of political power can permanently shield perpetrators from the demands for truth and justice made by the people they sought, and ultimately failed, to erase.
Now, their case is finally being heard in court. Three days a week, the Hernández Agustín sisters climb the stairs to the fifth floor of Guatemala City’s Palace of Justice. They sit through hours of testimony and legal argument, filling notebooks with observations and listening for the answers that have eluded their family for decades. Some days sting with the reopening of old wounds. Others dissolve into procedural delays, technical difficulties, and bureaucratic legal wrangling. They often leave frustrated and exhausted.
Still, they return. They do so because this case is about more than one family’s pursuit of justice. At a time when the United States is escalating violence at home and abroad, and governments like Guatemala’s continue to subordinate themselves to the imperatives of that long-standing imperial project, this trial carries particular significance. Most recently, this has included expanded military cooperation with Washington targeting alleged drug cartels in the country, a justification the US has invoked to extrajudicially kill more than 210 people over the past nine months.
The trial has therefore become a testament to all those who refused the silence imposed upon them. It is proof that those marked for erasure can reclaim their place in history. Above all, it is a reminder that no amount of political power can permanently shield perpetrators from the demands for truth and justice made by the people they sought, and ultimately failed, to erase.
The Long Shadow of Empire in Guatemala
The Guatemala into which the Hernández Agustín sisters were born bore the unmistakable imprint of empire. It was a country of staggering inequality, where generations inherited the desiccated remains of a nation picked clean by the vultures of foreign capital. The promise of reform had long since been extinguished. Gone was the Democratic Spring, the brief decade from 1944 to 1954 when popularly elected governments sought to expand democracy and direct the country’s wealth toward its people rather than multinational corporations and the landed oligarchy.
That dream was crushed with the 1954 CIA-backed overthrow of President Jacobo Árbenz. The coup sought not simply to remove a government but to restore the deeply unequal social order whose foundations had been laid under the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. A pliant strongman who willingly auctioned off his country’s future to the highest bidder, Ubico granted sweeping concessions to US corporations while enriching himself. Under his rule, the Boston-based United Fruit Company became Guatemala’s largest landholder, acquiring more than 40% of its arable land and near-monopolistic control over not only its lucrative banana exports but also critical infrastructure, including the country's railroads and electrical network.
The threat posed by the Democratic Spring was not simply that it had challenged landowners and foreign corporations. It had shown workers, peasants, and Indigenous communities that collective action could transform society.
Ubico’s regime collapsed in 1944 with a popular uprising. Under elected Presidents Juan José Arévalo and then Árbenz, Guatemala embarked on an ambitious reform program. Building on Arévalo’s efforts, Árbenz expanded labor protections, social security, and universal suffrage while pursuing economic modernization that sought to transform Guatemala from what he referred to as “a semi-colonial dependency into an independent nation” and “a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state.”
It was this challenge to entrenched economic power that placed Árbenz in the crosshairs of both Washington and Wall Street. The flash point was Decree 900, his sweeping agrarian reform. The measure authorized the expropriation of uncultivated large estates, including United Fruit’s vast holdings, for redistribution to hundreds of thousands of peasants. Remuneration would be based on the value the company itself had declared, a figure it had deliberately undervalued to reduce its tax burden. While the reform was rooted in economic nationalism and guaranteed compensation for the land, officials in Washington cast it as evidence of communist subversion.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles, both closely tied to United Fruit, orchestrated Árbenz’s overthrow. The coup ended Guatemala’s democratic experiment and ushered in decades of military rule, repression, and civil war.
A State Built on Terror
The dictatorship that emerged in the wake of the coup gave rise to a popular insurgency determined to reclaim the democratic aspirations that had been violently swept aside. It also ushered in a new era of repression. For Guatemala’s military rulers, the objective was to preserve their power. For their patrons in Washington, Guatemala became a Cold War proving ground, meant to demonstrate the consequences of challenging US political and economic power.
The threat posed by the Democratic Spring was not simply that it had challenged landowners and foreign corporations. It had shown workers, peasants, and Indigenous communities that collective action could transform society. That lesson had to be unlearned. In its place, they sought to teach another: that any attempt to remake Guatemala would be met with overwhelming violence. Terror became the principal pedagogy of the state.
From 1960 to 1996, Guatemala’s internal armed conflict claimed roughly 200,000 lives and left another 45,000 disappeared.
Repression failed to extinguish resistance. In 1960, dissident military officers launched an uprising against the regime. After it was crushed, many of its survivors retreated to the countryside, where they helped form the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), the first of several guerrilla organizations. The state responded with a brutal, US-backed counterinsurgency waged through roving death squads, systematic torture, forced disappearances, and indiscriminate targeting of suspected dissidents.
Rather than destroying the insurgency, the violence pushed it deeper into rural Guatemala, where Indigenous Maya communities and peasant organizers assumed an increasingly central role in new guerrilla organizations. By the late 1970s, the military had embraced a genocidal scorched-earth campaign, particularly against the Ixil Maya. Entire communities were treated as inherently subversive. The objective was no longer simply to defeat guerrillas but to destroy the social fabric that sustained Indigenous life.
Villages were razed. Thousands were massacred. Survivors were displaced or forced into tightly controlled “model villages” under a policy known as Palestinianization, where military authorities sought to erase Indigenous languages, traditions, religious practices, and communal life in the name of anti-communist pacification and national modernization.
From 1960 to 1996, Guatemala’s internal armed conflict claimed roughly 200,000 lives and left another 45,000 disappeared. The bloodiest paroxysm of violence came between 1981 and 1983, when security forces killed an estimated 100,000 people, overwhelmingly Indigenous Maya, in a genocidal campaign that journalist Vincent Bevins has referred to as “the largest bloodbath unleashed by the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.” The atrocities unfolded with US training and the material and diplomatic backing of the Reagan administration, which viewed Guatemala as a critical front in its campaign against leftist movements across Latin America, alongside its support for the Contras in Nicaragua and allied security forces in El Salvador and Honduras.
The Disappearance of Luz Leticia
Luz Leticia Hernández Agustín, or Leti, as her sisters call her, was one of the many lives cut short by the Guatemalan state during this period of extreme violence. As the eldest sibling, she occupied an outsized place in her family’s life. Marta and Mirtala remember her as hardworking, intelligent, and deeply compassionate. In a household, and community, marked by intense economic precarity and hardship, she assumed responsibilities well beyond her years, helping care for her younger siblings and easing whatever burdens she could.
This experience shaped Leti’s politics. She came to understand that centuries of colonial conquest had produced enduring systems of racism, dispossession, and exploitation that were still being felt. “Leti could see all of that,” Marta explains. “All the deep-seated wrongs that have persisted for so long.” She imagined a different Guatemala, one where those structures no longer defined people's lives and where everyone, regardless of ethnicity or social standing, could live with dignity.
Leti’s sisters have never abandoned their search for truth and justice, nor their determination to affirm their sister’s existence.
Her commitment extended beyond her immediate family. As Mirtala recalled, Leti was motivated certainly “by her own experiences, and the way our parents lived,” but equally “by the suffering she witnessed among our people.” Despite all the evidence seemingly to the contrary, she never surrendered her belief that Guatemala could become a more just society. That conviction would draw her into the resistance. She joined Nuestro Movimiento (“Our Movement”), an underground organization affiliated with the Organization of People in Arms (ORPA).
In late 1982, Leti became involved in an effort to secure the release of a comrade, Ileana del Rosario Solares Castillo, who was illegally detained by the regime. On October 14, members of Nuestro Movimiento abducted Jorge Mario Ríos Muñoz, the nephew of General Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s de facto president who presided over the bloodiest phase of the genocide, for which he was convicted in 2013. The operation sought to force a prisoner exchange. Jorge Mario remained captive until November 21, when an intelligence unit, working alongside Israeli advisors, rescued him. In the process, Luz Leticia, Ana María López Rodríguez, María Cruz López Rodríguez, and Leandro Gabriel Calate Temu were all captured.
In that moment, Leti entered the opaque machinery of forced disappearance. She was taken into a clandestine detention system notorious for torture, sexual violence, and the systematic degradation of prisoners. Her family never saw or heard from her again.
The Struggle for Justice
Leti’s sisters have never abandoned their search for truth and justice, nor their determination to affirm their sister’s existence. In 2001, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) concluded that the Guatemalan state had violated the rights to life, liberty, humane treatment, judicial protection, and a fair trial of Ileana, Luz Leticia, and Ana María. It recommended that Guatemala locate the women’s remains, compensate their families, and identify and prosecute those responsible.
Five years later, the Guatemalan government offered the Hernández Agustín family an “amicable settlement agreement,” consisting of financial compensation without accountability and without the return of Luz Leticia's remains. They refused on principle.
In 2023, prosecutors indicted Juan Francisco Cifuentes Cano, the former commander of the National Police’s Fifth Corps Special Operations Reaction Battalion (BROE), on charges of crimes against humanity and enforced disappearance. After years of defense appeals aimed at delaying or derailing the proceedings, the long-awaited trial finally began on May 5.
Will we accept a world in which some have the right to kill and others the right to die, or insist on one governed by justice and accountability?
Justice, for them, means a broader reckoning with the collective trauma inflicted by enforced disappearance. The crime was designed to leave families trapped in cycles of hope and grief, producing what Marta described as the “strange sensation” that “[Leti] had died, yet was somehow still alive,” condemning them to “so much uncertainty, anxiety, and immense, constant stress.”
For Mirtala, that torment was central to the crime itself. “Enforced disappearance,” she explained, “is an act committed by the state against its own citizens, often in collusion with the very groups meant to guarantee the population's safety.” It extends far beyond the individual. “They don't just make the person disappear,” she said. “They do so in a way that instills terror and fear, and that is precisely what they have sought to do: to plunge us and our entire family into that terror.”
“It is a crime, an undeniable crime, but one committed in a sophisticated manner against our humanity,” she continued. The violence is directed not only at the disappeared but those left behind, condemning families to live with uncertainty while knowing their loved one is in the hands of the state. “It's agonizing to know that she's with these people.” “It’s powerlessness,” Mirtala said, “unable to do anything to pull [the disappeared] out of that cycle of violence and cruelty.”
Yet they have found meaning in the struggle. Their search for Leti has become inseparable from a broader fight over historical memory and for accountability. As Mirtala put it, it is a “story that reflects everything fractured in our country, all the underlying tensions and societal pain, and the struggles being waged on various fronts everywhere.”
Still, they approach that work with humility, believing that lasting change is built through small acts of collective resistance. “We are like an ant carrying a single grain of salt,” Mirtala explained. Yet she sees power even in the smallest acts. “This is how dust turns into sand, then into a gust of wind, and finally into a storm. We believe it will change many people’s perceptions.”
But this is not merely a struggle over memory. It is also a struggle over the present, over the ways impunity continues to shape Guatemala. In the decades since Leti’s disappearance, Guatemala has remained marked by stark inequality, corruption, violence, and rights abuses. The state continues to repress dissent, fueling recurring political crises rooted in its failure to meet the needs of its people. Mirtala sees in today’s situation the echoes of the violence that took her sister. “All these things,” she said, “they weigh on you, drop by drop, little by little.”
That is why pursuing Leti’s case has become about far more than one family’s search for justice. It is an act of resistance, a “vindication,” against a state that, as Mirtala put it, “has turned against its own people. Those who take power rob and take money from the people to enrich themselves" while the people “lack education, healthcare, food, and the chance for decent housing.” “To me,” she said, “it is a slap in the face, a punch to the gut of the state.”
The struggle has not been without risks. As documentary filmmaker Nancy Peckenham observed, “In Guatemala, to remember is dangerous.” Yet Mirtala and her sister remain resolute. “Sometimes I think about the risks,” Mirtala reflected, “but then I remember this isn’t just about asserting my sister’s rights. It is about the rights of thousands of people, both within Guatemala and abroad, because this is something suffered by all of us who lack power.”
Ultimately, she said, “that is what this has meant for us. It is a collective struggle.”
The case will continue through July. Its verdict will test not only Guatemala, but also whether we are doomed to live in a world, as the Trump administration architect of the United States’ ongoing nativist assault Stephen Miller put it, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” Will we accept a world in which some have the right to kill and others the right to die, or insist on one governed by justice and accountability? The trial is one link in this broader struggle over whether a better world is possible: one free from the violence of impunity and imperialism, sustained by the conviction that those who commit atrocities will one day be held to account, from Guatemala to Venezuela, Palestine to Iran, and here in the United States.
All quotes from Marta and Mirtala Hernández Agustín are from a June 2026 speech and interview conducted by the authors and translated from Spanish.
Correction: The name of General Efraín Ríos Montt's nephew was Jorge Mario Ríos Muñoz, not Mario Ríos Montt. The piece has been updated to reflect this.
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Rachel, Aysenur, Anne, Bisan: A Girl’s Guide to Genocide
When someone is apathetic to a group identity, or denies an ethnic cleansing, sometimes the simplicity of one name, a face, a young girl dreaming about her future despite the uncertainty of her death, can clarify the human impact of genocide.
Jul 10, 2026
There are few tools left for a young girl coping with the reality of surviving a genocide, and so she writes in her journal.
Rachel Corrie was 23 years old when she left her hometown of Olympia, Washington in 2003 to volunteer in Rafah and Gaza City. It was her second time ever leaving the United States.
While in the occupied territories in Israel, Rachel wrote furious to-do lists about possible next steps she should take as a volunteer acclimating to a new country. From getting a new phone number to call her mom, to calling the other organizers she worked with, her journals quickly filled with reminders about the next important thing she needed to do, and the larger questions she wrestled with as she dreamed and planned for her future.
In the safety of her diary, Rachel reckoned with the US military-industrial complex and Israeli soldiers shooting at children, and how these forces overshadowed the nonviolent activism she engaged in.
Rachel, Anne, and Aysenur are dead because genocide does not differentiate the joyful young girl from the villainized political “threat” to the supremacist military state.
On March 16, 2003 Rachel Corrie stood outside the home of a Palestinian family to position herself as an unwavering obstacle in the face of a bulldozer driven by Israeli soldiers intending to violently wreck the 600th Palestinian home that week. Despite her privileged white skin and neon orange jacket demanding the protections that an American citizen is supposedly entitled to, the bulldozer pushed her down a mound of dirt and drove over her body, crushing and killing her while an audience of activists and families watched in powerless dismay.
Rachel’s journal entries and emails to her parents in the weeks leading up to her murder were collected and curated into a play called My Name is Rachel Corrie. Recently, I watched a powerful production of this play at the Mirage Theatre in Kendall, Florida and it reminded me of three other girls whose documentation of their daily life became a historic tool for the world to understand a genocide, and how the precarity of the life and death of one young girl can touch a million hearts and humanize the victims who experience war.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. Anne Frank. Bisan Owda
Palestinians and international activists lift portraits of slain Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi as they arrive for her final farewell at the Rafidia hospital morgue in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on September 8, 2024. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/ AFP via Getty Images)
The story of Rachel Corrie mirrors that of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, another American from Washington who went to volunteer in the West Bank in 2024 after graduating college. Like Rachel, Aysenur was moved by the ongoing oppression of Palestinians, and the current genocide. She traveled to the West Bank and was trained in nonviolent activism practiced to show resistance to injustice without provoking violent reaction. On September 6, 2024, just three days into her volunteer mission, Aysenur peacefully ended a protest, followed Israeli military orders to vacate and disperse, and was standing with other activists in an olive orchard when an Israeli soldier shot her through her head. This murder of a US citizen happened during the Biden administration, and despite urgency from Aysenur’s congressional Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), her murder was never prosecuted as a war crime, violation of international law, or example of a larger practice of unjustified murders Israeli soldiers have committed since 1948.
Rachel Corrie and Aysenur Ezgi Eygi were young, hopeful, and driven by a deep sense of compassion and justice. They were courageous to risk their safety by volunteering in Gaza and the West Bank, but no volunteer participating in a peaceful demonstration should be murdered. The loss of two extremely bright girls with impressive futures ahead is devastating and cruel.
When discussing young girls who keep diaries during genocides, I don’t need to introduce the world to Anne Frank, or the power of her diary as an educational tool about the Holocaust that has been translated into dozens of languages across the world. Her father, Otto Frank, decided to publish Anne’s diary to memorialize his grief, love, and pride for his daughter’s unbridled spirit and unfinished life, and thanks to him millions of non-Jewish people are introduced to the Holocaust and emotionally moved to believe that an atrocity like that should never happen again.
My mom is a Holocaust educator who takes hundreds of Florida students every year through a model of the annex Anne Frank hid in. She introduces students to this girl named Anne who was around their age when she hid from Nazis, and died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just weeks before it was liberated by British forces.
While my Mom and I often disagree about the politics of Israel, we share an extensive education on the Holocaust, and the firm values that human rights should be respected, and that never again means never again for anyone. During one of our disagreements about whether or not a genocide was occurring in Gaza, I reminded her of our shared values, and shared the name of a young girl my age: Bisan Owda.
Bisan is a 29-year-old journalist in Gaza, whose charm and unwavering spark of life reaches millions of people across the world through her daily Instagram videos titled: It’s Bisan from Gaza, and I’m Still Alive. I told my mom that Bisan’s Instagram posts remind me of a modern Anne Frank’s diary, and that every time I see her face on my feed I am relieved she survived another day of these three years of Hell.
Rachel Corrie, Anne Frank and Aysenur Ezgi Eygi are dead, but I hope Bisan Owda lives to see the end of this genocide, and a world where Palestinians have the same safety, peace, dignity, and sovereignty that others are granted, entitled to, and have the privilege and power of possessing. Now that my mom knows Bisan’s name and watches her Instagram videos, she also hopes that Bisan survives this genocide.
When someone is apathetic to a group identity, or denies an ethnic cleansing, sometimes the simplicity of one name, a face, an innocent spirit, a young girl dreaming about her future despite the uncertainty of her death, can clarify the human impact of genocide.
Her name is Rachel Corrie. Anne Frank. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. Bisan Owda
She is one precarious life in a war of indiscriminate massacre. One flower in a bloodied field.
Rachel, Anne, and Aysenur are dead because genocide does not differentiate the joyful young girl from the villainized political “threat” to the supremacist military state.
Bisan is still alive. We can follow her story, share her name, and find the individual humanity that she shares with the millions of Palestinian children, mothers, fathers, uncles, and brothers immensely suffering that all deserve to live in peace with dignity.
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As Lawyer Says Dr. Abu Safiya Is at Risk of Death in Israeli Prison, UN Rights Body Joins Call for Release
The panel found that the imprisoned doctor's detention is "arbitrary."
Jul 06, 2026
A United Nations rights body said Monday that the detention of Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Israel was "arbitrary" and likely an indication of "a widespread or systematic practice of arbitrary detention in the country" as it demanded the physician be released immediately.
“The appropriate remedy would be to release [him] immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law,” said the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, warning that Israel has violated multiple articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by holding the doctor in detention since December 2024, when he was captured along with staff and patients at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza.
Abu Safiya has been held without charge ever since, as Israel has accused the doctor of being a member of Hamas, pointing to Gaza's Military Medical Services records that show him listed as a "colonel" and a photo of him seated next to members of the group.
But medical and human rights groups note that there is no evidence that Abu Safiya has had a command combat role and that Hamas, which announced the dissolution of its government on Monday, has governed Gaza through its political wing, likening Abu Safiya's role to that of the US surgeon general.
The working group issued the call following Abu Safiya's recent transfer to the underground Rakefet interrogation facility at Nitzan Prison, which is known for abuse of prisoners.
The doctor recently told his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, after being transferred on June 24: "This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me. I don't see myself surviving. This is the end."
Odeah reported after visiting the prison on July 2 that Abu Safiyah was nearly unrecognizable and had suffered injuries to his "head, eyes, ears, and neck" and was having trouble breathing. He was "in a state of extreme weakness and was constantly on the verge of losing consciousness mid-conversation," according to his lawyer's account.
"I have visited Dr. Abu Safiya several times since his detention, but the individual I encountered during this latest visit was not the same person I had previously met," said Odeh in a statement. "His physical and psychological state, the severe injuries visible on his body, and his personal testimony leave no room for doubt: his life is in immediate danger. He must be transferred out of the Rakefet facility immediately and granted an urgent, independent examination."
On Monday, the American Human Rights Council (AHRC) was among those demanding Abu Safiya's immediate release, pointing to reports from his legal team that he is in "imminent danger" and potentially at risk of death if he remains in Israeli detention.
"Since his arrest on December 27, 2024, Dr. Abu Safiya has reportedly been subjected to torture, abuse, and prolonged solitary confinement," said the group. "His health continues to deteriorate, and he has been denied communication with his family and legal team. Reports indicate he was recently transferred to an isolated cell, raising further alarm about his safety and wellbeing."
AHRC noted that Abu Safiya placed "his patients’ lives above his own safety" as he continued to provide medical care and to publicly call on Israel not to target healthcare facilities during the Israeli assault on Gaza that began in October 2023.
"He refused to abandon the hospital or leave the wounded behind despite repeated Israeli demands and threats," said AHRC. "He continued his humanitarian mission under bombardment, siege, and near-total depletion of medical supplies."
Imad Hamad, executive director of the group, called on physicians' groups and international medical associations to urgently demand Abu Safiya's release, as hundreds of people in Tel Aviv also assembled in solidarity with the doctor.
"We urge everyone to take a stand and push for the good doctor's release," said Hamad. "This is not about politics; this is about medicine and human rights."
At Amnesty International, Erika Guevara Rosas, the senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, called the details that have emerged recently about Abu Safiya's condition "truly horrifying."
"It is unconscionable that a pediatrician, who has dedicated his life to saving others in the occupied Gaza Strip, is being subjected to torture and other ill-treatment—including severe physical and psychological abuse and prolonged solitary confinement—while being detained without any justification," said Guevara Rosas.
She added that Odeh's account "must serve as an urgent wake-up call for states around the world, particularly Israel’s allies," such as the US.
"It is utterly reprehensible that a doctor who refused to abandon his patients, and who became one of the most prominent voices denouncing the devastation of Gaza’s healthcare system, remains arbitrarily and unlawfully detained under Israel’s baseless designation as an ‘unlawful combatant,'" said Guevara Rosas. "He continues to be deprived of his most fundamental rights, including the right to be protected against torture and other ill-treatment, and his rights to a fair trial and due process."
"Expressions of concern alone are little more than a cynical fig leaf for states’ inaction in the face of Israel’s crushing of Palestinians’ human rights," she added. "Amnesty, alongside other human rights organizations, is not simply calling for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s immediate release. This is a call for urgent and effective intervention to save his life.”
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