Tag Archives: campesinos

Attacks Continue against Honduran Rights Activists

November 20, 2014 at 2:32 PM
HONDURAS-VIOLENCE-CRIME-VICTIMS

White crosses in memory of those victims of violence are seen around Tegucigalpa after being placed by members of human rights organizations, on July 9, 2014. (Photo credit: ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)

It has been almost two years since Amnesty International launched its report on attacks against human rights in the Americas, Transforming Pain into Hope. Many of the cases it documented took place in Honduras, often against campesino (rural) leaders. Unfortunately, human rights abusers continue to target rural activists. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Another Guatemalan Union Leader is Dead—Will Two Campesino Activists Be Next?

March 13, 2013 at 9:09 AM

Workers Rights = Human Rights

On March 8, two men on motorcycles cut off Carlos Hernández’s pickup truck fired eight 9mm bullets at him, killing him. Hernández was a member of several community organizations and labor groups, including:

  • The Camotán Peasant Farmers Association
  • The New Day Peasant Farmer Coordination
  • The Coordination of Popular, Indigenous, Church, Trade Union and Peasant Organizations of the East (COPISCO)
  • The National Front for the Struggle (FNL)
  • The Executive Committee of the Guatemalan National Trade Union of Health Workers (SNTSG)

You may recall the SNTSG from a blog I wrote in December, about four Central American cases in Amnesty’s Transforming Pain into Hope report about Human Rights Defenders in the Americas. One of the cases featured in that report was that of Luis Ovidio Ortíz Cajas, the Public Relations Secretary of the Executive Committee of the SNTSG. An unknown assailant killed Ortíz Cajas and three other men on March 24, 2012—a little less than one year before this latest killing.

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