Criminalization - Latinamerica Press

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CONTENT
03
CRIMINALIZATION OF SOCIAL PROTEST, A REGIONAL POLITICAL STRATEGY
04
ECUADOR: SILENCE, FEAR AND COERCION
Luis Ángel Saavedra
08
CHILE: REPRESSION AGAINST THE “INTERNAL ENEMY”
Arnaldo Pérez Guerra
12
GUATEMALA: CRIMINALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS PROTEST INTENSIFIES
Louisa Reynolds
16
BOLIVIA: SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN THE TIMES OF THE PLURINATIONAL STATE
Fernando Valdivia Antisolis
20
MEXICO: IMPRISONED, DISAPPEARED AND MURDERED ACTIVISTS
Alberto Buitre
24
INTERNATIONAL MECHANISMS TO PROTECT RIGHTS WHEN THEY ARE
VIOLATED
26
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: “HERE PROTESTS ARE NOT CRIMINALIZED; HERE
PROTESTERS ARE KILLED OR HURT”
Gabriela Read
28
ARGENTINA: CRIMINALIZATION OF PROTESTS SPREADS TO THE PERIPHERY
Hernán Scandizzo
32
PARAGUAY: GOVERNMENT FREE TO REPRESS
Gustavo Torres y Paulo López
36
HONDURAS: PEASANTS VICTIMS OF CRIMINALIZATION
Jennifer Ávila
40
BRAZIL: HARSH POLICE REPRESSION AGAINST SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
José Pedro Martins
44
PERU: DEMONIZATION AND CRIMINALIZATION
Víctor Liza
Latinamerica Press – Special report
Criminalization of social protesta.
Director and managing editor:
Elsa Chanduví Jaña
This special report is produced
by COMUNICACIONES ALIADAS,
a Perubased non gobernmental
organization that since 1964 has
been producing independent and
reliable information and analysis.
Our objective is contribute in
advocacy processes aimed to
the assertion of rights and the
construction of public policies.
Editor:
Cecilia Remón Arnaiz
Translation:
Dana Litovsky
Stephanie Larsen
Stefan Sprinckmöller
Victoria Macchi
William Chico Colugna
Design and layout:
Graciela Ramirez Ramirez
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Published thanks to support
from: American Jewish
World Service (AJWS)
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Telf.: (511) 4603025 / 4605517
www.comunicacionesaliadas.com
Also available in spanish:
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CRIMINALIZATION OF SOCIAL PROTEST, A
REGIONAL POLITICAL STRATEGY
I
n all of Latin America, social protest,
as well as organizations and
social leaders, are criminalized by
governments — both neo-liberal and
progressive —, in order to silence
their voices of dissent, delegitimize their
struggle, immobilize popular organizations
and intimidate all those individuals who
practice their legitimate right to organize,
freely express their opinion, and demand
respect for their rights.
The methods to criminalize social
organizations and their leaders are
numerous: arbitrary detention, preventive
imprisonment subject to
excessive
prolongation, criminal prosecutions,
false or unfounded criminal charges, no
respect towards the due process of law,
disproportionate sanctions, persecution,
hostility and physical aggression, direct
state repression, murdering of protesters
and advocates, forced disappearances,
and the questioning of rights such as the
right to strike and popular mobilization.
Governments increasingly draw upon
laws — they enact new ones or modify
existing ones in order to guarantee
impunity towards police and armed
forces in terms of the use of excessive
force; they enforce anti-terrorist laws
towards indigenous leaders — in order
to criminalize the right to social protest.
Criminalization policies look at massive
media as a key mechanism and apparatus
that makes social protest seen as if it
was a crime, and those who advocate it
as criminals, often coming to defaming
them.
The Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights (IACHR), in its Second
report on the situation of human rights
defenders in the Americas, of 2011, notes
that “public protest is one of the usual
ways of exercising the right of assembly
and the right to freedom of expression,
and that it has an essential social interest
in guaranteeing the proper functioning of
the democratic system. Thus, expressions
against the government’s proposed laws
or policies, far from being an incitement
to violence, are an integral part of any
pluralistic democracy.”
“In view of the importance of social protest
in a democratic system, the IACHR reiterates
that the State has a limited framework to
justify any restriction in this regard; while
the right to assembly is not absolute and
may be subject to certain restrictions,
these restrictions must be reasonable in
order to ensure that the demonstrations
are peaceful, and must be ‘informed by
the principles of legality, necessity and
proportionality,’” adds the IACHR.
If it is about crimes, many of the strategies
utilized by the states — to repress and
criminalize social protest — borders on
delinquency by jeopardizing the life and
integrity of those who take to the streets
to protest, block highways or occupy
ancestral indigenous lands, which are ways
to voice their disagreement, for example,
with an extractive activity or a megaproject,
since they had not been heard or consulted
and, in that case, feeling that their
demands are not adequately addressed.
Social protest is a demonstration of the
rights to freedom of association and
freedom of expression coming from those
who promote the defense and protection
of civil, political, economic, social, cultural,
and environmental rights, and the collective
rights of indigenous populations, multiple
rights that are expressly recognized
under the diverse Inter-American legal
instruments that states have signed and
agreed to.
Given the seriousness of this generalized
policy in the region, Latinamerica Press,
with the support of the American Jewish
World Service (AJWS), has produced this
special report which addresses the current
situation that social leaders are facing in
eleven countries of Latin America.
3
ECUADOR
Javier Ramirez, campesino leader arrested for fighting against mining, on the day of his release after 10 months in
prison.
SILENCE, FEAR AND COERCION
Government implements
new ways to criminalize and
control social protest.
Luis Ángel Saavedra in Quito
4
T
he Ecuadorian government has
decided to confront the social
organizations opposed to its
political project by taking the organizations’
leaders to court to imprison them or restrain
them with indefinite trials in order to silence
them. Likewise, the government seeks to
close down the organizations through a
decree that threatens their stability and
JÉSSICA MATUTE
Gutiérrez, issued a report which found that
the practice of criminalizing social protest
continued in the government, for it showed
the existence of 21 new cases between
2008 and 2010. The new Ombudsman,
Ramiro Rivadeneira, who is aligned with the
government and who took office in late 2011,
chose to cast into oblivion his predecessor’s
report, citing methodological errors.
Since then, the government has lashed
out in various ways against the organizations
and the social protest. Salvador Quishpe,
indigenous leader and prefect of the
province of Zamora Chinchipe, in the
southern Amazon, summarizes these new
ways of lashing out, citing the control of the
media; control of the poorest social sector
through monthly installment of US$50,
which is called “human development bonus”
and is given to nearly two million people;
the division of social organizations and
associations; cooption of community leaders
with job offers; and finally, the initiation of
trials against those not docile enough for the
government.
“Since you refuse to submit yourself,
now you’ll go to trial,” says Quishpe while
analyzing the ciminalization of social leaders.
limits their activities. The organizations,
meanwhile, have not yet defined their
strategies for dealing with the government
threats, but there are looming options for
social unity that concern the government.
In 2008, the Constituent Assembly
granted amnesty to more than 360 people
whose trials were related to protests and
acts of resistance. All of these trials began
before the government of Rafael Correa,
who started his first term in 2007.
In 2011, the Ombudsman’s Office of
Ecuador, led at the time by Fernando
Harassment of social organizations
Ecuadorian social organizations have
slowly moved away from government
influence and have began to take actions
of opposition, such as the demonstrations
of September and November 2014 in which
they rejected, among other things, the labor
reforms that restrict workers’ rights, the
enforcement of Decree 16, issued in June
2013, which controls social organization,
restrictions on freedom of expression and
the criminalization of social protest.
Last Mar. 19, social movements staged
another day of protest in nine cities. In
addition to those issues already raised,
women’s groups joined to reject the
new sex education policy that is based
on morality and abstinence, and other
consumer groups affected by the new
tariffs on imports also joined.
Decree 16 violates the right to freedom
of association by requiring a series of reports
with which the government can know about
the actions and thoughts of organizations.
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“The entire state apparatus is controlled
as the General Comptroller of the State is
by an authoritarian government to shut
demanding a number of documents and
down social organizations; they want
reports that go beyond the powers of
to force us to report on each assembly,
the Comptroller and that seek to control
each meeting; say what resources [we
activities and private decisions of an
have], what we have invested, who has
organization.
given [the resources]. That is, they want
a source of information
that violates the right
to free association,”
“The entire state apparatus is controlled by an
said Nina Pacari, an
historical leader of the
authoritarian government to shut down social
indigenous movement,
to Latinamerica Press,
organizations; they want to force us to report
in regards to the
requirements
under
on each assembly, each meeting; say what
Decree 16 for an
resources [we have], what we have invested,
organization to exist.
For his part, the
current president of who has given [the resources]. That is, they want
the Confederation of a source of information that violates the right to
Indigenous Nationalities
(CONAIE),
Jorge
free association.”
Herrera, expressed his
concern about the use
NINA PACARI
of this decree to close
indigenous organizations
down.
“Decree 16 is a measure that has
Threats and trials
caused unease within our organizations; it
The forms of social control and
is a measure of bad faith that violates the
criminalization of protests that Quishpe
constitutional framework,” says Herrera.
has referred, has resulted in the silence
Within the context of the People’s
of many organizations, some of which
Summit held in Quito on March 5 and 6,
are linked to the government through
the CONAIE staged a march toward the
economic agreements. Others are fearful
National Assembly and the Constitutional
of speaking out to avoid becoming
Court to demand the repeal of the decree.
vulnerable to possible closure.
“We have made a claim of
Moreover, many leaders have also
unconstitutionality but so far the judges
become silent. “They are threatened with
are asleep and have not responded in
a trial and many avoid comment publicly
regards to this request,” says Herrera. The
on the government. Also there are death
CONAIE’s demand is the fourth claim of
threats,” says Marlos Santi, former
unconstitutionality that Ecuadorian social
president of CONAIE, to Latinamerica
organizations have filed in regards to
Press.
Decree 16 and that has not been processed
Indeed, in recent months social
by the Constitutional Court.
leaders, accused of sabotage and
So far Decree 16 has been the basis
terrorism, have been arrested and
for the December 2013 closure of the
sentenced, as in the case of campesino
Fundación Pachamama, non-governmental
leader Javier Ramírez, who was released
organization in defense of the environment.
on Feb, 10 after spending 10 months in
It is feared that the decree will also be the
prison, or the case of Manuel Molina,
basis for the dismantling of the CONAIE
another campesino leader detained for
—
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four months after being accused of the
same crimes. For these same crimes,
the government seeks to arrest Mery
Zamora, teacher and former leader of
the National Union of Educators, despite
having already been acquitted of the
charges against her. At the request of the
President, the Attorney General’s Office
asked the Constitutional Court to annul
the acquittal the National Court granted
to Zamora.
Ramírez
was
arrested
after
participating in a meeting with the Ministry
of the Interior which he had attended to
ratify the decision of the people of Intag,
in the north of the country, to oppose
mining. After his arrest, the National
Mining Company entered Intag and now is
a divided population, without the power
that once allowed them to stop mining
The talks the indigenous
movements have with rightwing leaders have put them
in the eye of controversy.
This is used by the
government to discredit the
indigenous leadership and
to plan for the formation
of a new indigenous
organization that brings
together indigenous people
who in the past were also
questioned for their actions.
activities in their territories for over 20
years.
Arrested on July 9, 2014, Molina is
accused of sabotage and terrorism for
participating in a protest against the
water law in 2009. Molina had no legal
defense for three months because he
was advised to “not make a fuss.” He
was finally released on Dec. 4 of last year.
Molina’s case shows another government
strategy that is to initiate lawsuits and
keep them open to use when a leader
attempts to participate in a new protest.
Other open trials can also buy the
silence of organizations, especially when
these have maintained agreements with
the government that have not been
successfully fulfilled. Some organizations,
especially indigenous organizations, that
wished to participate in the March 19
protests, had to desist from doing so
because were activated pending lawsuits
from some years ago for failing to
comply with the agreements signed with
state institutions of this and previous
governments.
Almost nonexistent options
The social movement’s options
for resistance are few because the
government’s
control
leaves
few
opportunities for participation. This has
caused those from the left and right
to begin discussing ways of restoring
autonomy to state institutions, especially
to justice agencies and the electorate.
The talks the indigenous movements
have with right-wing leaders have put
them in the eye of controversy. This is
used by the government to discredit
the indigenous leadership and to plan
for the formation of a new indigenous
organization that brings together
indigenous people who in the past were
also questioned for their actions, as is the
case of Antonio Vargas, Miguel Lluco or
Delia Caguano.
In this scenario, social mobilization
is presented as the only form of political
participation that can return social
movements their previous strength and
capacity of advocacy. q
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CHILE
REPRESSION
AGAINST THE
“INTERNAL
ENEMY”
Arnaldo Pérez Guerra in Santiago
T
he phenomenon grows with
the invisibility and repression
of protests opposing the
extractivism and who advocate
for political, cultural and territorial rights.
Governments and transnationals have
renewed the concept of “internal enemy,”
and are prosecuting leaders of the social
movements.
“Those are today the people excluded
from the economic model and all who
raise their voice against the injustices of
the free market economy. The Mapuche
are identified with terrorism. The dispute
about property with timber companies
is perceived as a brake on progress, a
threat to the state of law that weakens
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ARNALDO PÉREZ GUERRA
The strategy for social control
to protect the neoliberal model
is to criminalize the Mapuche
people and social movements.
the national unity,” stated the attorney
Eduardo Mella, in the magazine Reflexión
No. 36, published by the Center for
Mental Health and Human Rights.
Chile is a dependent economy, an
exporter of natural resources, while the
state is limited to protect the interests
of large corporations and transnationals.
Environmental, regional and student
mobilizations are accompanied by a
constant presence of repression. Their
leaders are legally prosecuted.
Rodrigo Mundaca, an agronomist
who has denounced the theft of water
in Cabildo, Petorca, and La Ligua in
the Valparaíso region, by businessmen
and politicians, including the Christian
Police prepare to repress social mobilizations
Democrat former Minister Edmundo
Pérez Yoma, was sentenced to 541 days
in prison in April 2014 for “damages and
calumnies” and faces additional judicial
action against him in la Ligua, Quillota
and Concepción.
Territories in conflict are militarized,
as is the case of the Mapuche communities
in Bío Bío, Los Lagos and la Araucanía and,
recently, the valley of Chopa, in Caimanes,
in the northern region of Coquimbo. The
community has no water and is completely
polluted by rubbish and waste from the
Los Pelambres mine owned by the Luksic
Group. Road blocks, hunger strikes and
barricades have been the visible means of
highlighting their demands.
For more than three months, dating
from Nov. 2014, Caimanes put a road
camp at the El Mauro reservoir —
located 12 kilometers from Caimanes,
where the mining company has
deposited millions of tons of waste —
after the company failed to abide by a
Supreme Court decision obligating it to
restore the natural riverbed of the El
Pupio River.
Last December, the spokesperson
for the community, Cristián Flores,
was arrested and intimidated by the
police. Nancy Reyes, his wife, says:
“His arrest was a form of harassment
and intimidation. It was staged; they
created a crime in order to arrest him.”
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Last March 4, eight community
members were wounded after an act
of violent repression with helicopters,
dozens of vehicles and blockades, against
hundreds of protesters in Caimanes. One
of them lost an eye due to buckshot used
by the police.
Mapuche under fire
During the most recent raid on
Ercilla, in la Araucanía, this past Feb. 26,
Mapuche children were mistreated in
the Coñomil Epuleo community that is
claiming its ancestral lands. Members
of the Investigations Police squad
arrested the werken — the community’s
traditional authority and messenger
— Jorge Quiduleo and threatened and
interrogated two Mapuche children who
are four and eight years old.
“It was very traumatic, the police
shouted at them to get out of their beds
and get down on the floor. Under the
pressure and violence, the children began
crying out,” said Rosa Quiduleo, the two
children’s grandmother.
Days before, the Supreme Court
had ratified a decision in favor of three
“The cases of
criminalization and
imprisonment for
demanding territorial
rights are increasing. Today
there is an onslaught of
judicial violence against
the machis (spiritual/health
authorities of the Mapuche
people).”
— RODRIGO GUERRA
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children of this community, after the
National Institute of Human Rights
solicited a precautionary measure. The
minors had been arrested after a raid and
spent several days imprisoned and were
brought to the courtroom with their
hands and feet manacled.
Not one mass media outlet broadcast
that in the middle of this past February six
Mapuche political prisoners denounced
torture in the prison at Angol, while an expriest Luis García Huidobro — defender
of the Mapuche people and spokesman
for the political prisoner, Emilio Berkhoff
— was condemned to jail in an attempt to
silence him.
Incarcerated Mapuches or those
accused and being processed by the
judicial system for their defense of
political, cultural or territorial rights are
recognized as political prisoners by human
rights organizations, including the office
of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights.
The Inter-American Court of Human
Rights condemned Chile last year for
human rights violations against eight
members of the Mapuche community in
the case of “Norín Catrimán and others
against the State.” This ruling established
a precedent that is an important
acknowledgment of the phenomenon of
criminalization.
According to the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights, the sentences
condemning the victims — including the
lonkos (the chief leaders) Segundo Aniceto
Norín Catrimán and Pasqual Huentequeo
Pichún Paillalao and the werken Víctor
Manuel Ancalaf Llaupe — for alleged
crimes of terrorism, emitted in 2002 and
2003 under the Antiterrorist Law, violates
the principle of legality and the right to
the presumption of innocence.
“The cases of criminalization and
imprisonment for demanding territorial
rights are increasing. Today there is an
onslaught of judicial violence against the
machis (spiritual/health authorities of
the Mapuche people). Machis have been
arrested and convicted: Millaray Huichalaf,
Tito Cañulef, Francisca Linconao and
Celestino Córdoba. Chile is applying the
Diverse analysts agree that
this political and criminal
strategy is spreading
dangerously “in a Chile that
is awakening and whose
streets are overflowing
with protests against
social injustice and the
oppression of the market.”
— PAULINA ACEVEDO
Antiterrorist Law promulgated by [the
dictator Augusto] Pinochet, used today
with the objective of repressing Mapuche
demands,” comments the social scientist,
Rodrigo Guerra, in statements to Noticias
Aliadas.
In spite of the recommendations of the
United Nations Human Rights Committee
in 2014 against the application of the
Antiterrorist Law, the administration
of President Michelle Bachelet has
continued applying it and its repeal is not
mentioned, only its improvement.
“Between 2008 and February 2010
the government of Bachelet invoked the
Antiterrorist Law in seven instances, with
a total of 54 arrests of Mapuche members
attributing them terrorist crimes,”
pointed out the political prisoner, Héctor
Llaitul. In 2014, the Mapuche organization,
Meli Wixan Mapu, acknowledged the
existence of “20 Mapuche political
prisoners.”
Repress and infiltrate
Diverse analysts agree that this
political and criminal strategy is spreading
dangerously “in a Chile that is awakening
and whose streets are overflowing with
protests against social injustice and the
oppression of the market,” in the words
of Paulina Acevedo. She further says,
“Students, people in debt for housing,
workers, indigenous, environmentalists
are only some of the sectors that are in
the target.”
An emblematic case is that of the
student, Víctor Montoya, who spent 16
months in preventative incarceration,
accused under the anti-terrorist law of
supposedly placing a bomb in a police
post in Feb. 2013. The prosecutor
presented testimony from “protected’
witnesses and centered his case
on the student of being a “vegan.”
Montoya was absolved of the charges
in two judgments last year. “It is the
Antiterrorist Law that causes all this,
you are considered guilty until you
prove the contrary,” said Montoya.
Mireille Fanon, of the Frantz Fanon
Foundation, commented about the
Montoya case after her visit in 2014 as a
human rights observer that the student
“spent 16 months in prison because of
false evidence under the pretext that
the Chilean state need to demonstrate
the existence of a terrorist threat.
The State knowingly aids and abets
the fabrication and use of illegitimate
procedures always and when it attempts
to reinforce its need to maintain control
over the population.”
For Guerra, “there is a growing
escalation and legitimation of the powers
of [government] security agencies with
the objective of repression and infiltration
of social movements. The Antiterrorist
Law — illegitimate and aberrant from
a juridical standpoint — continues to
be applied against social activists and
principally against the authorities and
members of the Mapuche communities,
former political prisoners, young people
accused of anarchism, as well as the
okupas [who use vacant dwellings] and
vegans who supposedly plant explosives.
The majority of the trials have ended
acquitting the accused after months or
years of unjust imprisonment.” q
11
GUATEMALA
People gathered in the central square in Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, on Mar. 19, to witness the re-opening of the
Snuq Jolom Konob radio station.
CRIMINALIZATION OF
INDIGENOUS PROTEST
INTENSIFIES
Government imprisons
indigenous leaders charged
without evidence and accuses
human rights organizations
to promote terrorism.
O
n the morning of Mar. 19, the
town of Santa Eulalia, tucked
away in the Cuchumatanes
mountain range in the
northern department of Huehuetenango,
was buzzing with anticipation. Locals had
gathered in the main square to witness
the re-opening of the Snuq Jolom Konob
*2014-2015 International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Elizabeth Neuffer Journalism Fellow.
12
Louisa Reynolds*
PRENSA COMUNITARIA
community radio station, which had been
closed by mayor Diego Marcos two months
earlier.
Created in 2000, Snuq Jolom Konob
means “head of the people” in the Mayan
Q’anjob’al language, a reference to a giant
pre-Columbian monolith sculpture that
exists in the area, of which only the head
remains.
Staffed by indigenous volunteers, the
station broadcasts in Q’anjob’al and has
played a vital role in terms of saving this
Mayan language — spoken by almost
100,000 people in the towns of San Pedro
Soloma, San Juan Ixcoy, Barillas and Santa
Eulalia — from extinction.
It has also allowed the Q’anjob’al
community to voice its opposition to the
construction of a hydroelectric dam on
the Cambalam River that has led to the
displacement of local families. In 2011,
the administration of President Otto
Pérez Molina granted Hidro Santa Cruz, a
subsidiary of Spanish corporation Hidralia
Energía, a license to build the dam without
obtaining local communities’ prior and
informed consent, in accordance with
International Labor Organization (ILO)
Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal
Peoples.
The murder of community leader
Andrés Francisco Miguel by armed security
guards employed by Hidro Santa Cruz in
May 2012 sparked off a series of protests
throughout northern Huehuetenango that
were met with heavy-handed repression
from the central government.
President Pérez Molina, a retired
army general, declared a state of siege in
Barillas, suspending constitutional rights
and placing the army in control of the
area. In scenes reminiscent of the army’s
onslaught against indigenous communities
during Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war,
soldiers and police raided the town, kicking
down doors without search warrants and
threatening women with rape.
Nineteen community leaders were
detained and taken to a high-security
prison in Guatemala City, charged with
crimes ranging from armed robbery to
terrorism. Some were eventually released
due to lack of evidence after being unjustly
imprisoned for up to 150 days and others
are still awaiting trial.
According
to
Human
Rights
Ombudsman Jorge de León Duque, the
detainees’ fundamental human rights
were violated because they were not
informed of the reason they were being
imprisoned and they were not allowed
access to translators even though they
were Q’anjob’al speakers.
Political prisoners
Under the climate of repression that
the Q’anjob’al community has endured
since Hidro Santa Cruz was granted the
13
license to build the dam, Snuq Jolom
Konob was its only remaining means of
voicing discontent and planning resistance
activities.
The station played such a vital role
in the community that when the mayor
of Santa Eulalia, who belongs to the
opposition Lider party and is in favor of
the dam, forcibly shut it down on Jan. 20,
the people of Santa Eulalia were willing to
lay down their lives in order to defend it.
interviewed by Latinamerica Press, Juárez
and another Q’anjob’al leader, Domingo
Baltazar, were arrested without a warrant
by two police agents in Guatemala City,
after they traveled to Guatemala City to
meet with human rights organizations
that are documenting the human rights
violations committed against their
community. During the incident, lawyer
Ricardo Cajas was physically assaulted by
the two agents when he demanded that
they should produce
an arrest warrant
“We consider ourselves political prisoners. Even and read Juárez and
Baltazar their rights.
if we are behind bars we insist that our ancestral
Three
days
later,
they
appeared
peoples should re-orient their struggle.”
before Judge Otto
Felipe Vásquez who
RIGOBERTO JUÁREZ MATEO
set
precautionary
measures in lieu of
remand.
However,
During the confrontation between the
after they left the courtroom they were
townspeople and municipal employees
detained once again by the police. They
that ensued, 20-year-old Pascual Basilio
are accused of kidnapping and instigating
Pascual Diego was shot dead. His father,
criminal activity, charges which they deny.
Domingo Antonio, and other eyewitnesses,
Speaking from prison, Juárez told
said that the mayor, under the effects of
Guatemalan journalist Andrea Ixchiú: “We
liquor, drew his gun and shot him. The
consider ourselves political prisoners.
victim died in hospital two months later.
Even if we are behind bars we insist that
On Mar. 19, Snuq Jolom Konob was
our ancestral peoples should re-orient
due to be re-opened. However, armed
their struggle. Self-determination is the
municipal employees forcibly prevented
way. There is no other way because the
community media activists from entering
state is not a viable option for us. The
the studio and to this day it remains
state has been built in order to repress
closed. Since it was created 15 years ago,
our people, to harm us and to steal from
Snuq Jolom Konob had broadcast from
us the little resources that we have”.
the municipality’s premises.
On the same day that Juárez
“The attacks on the radio have occurred
and Baltazar appeared before Judge
in a context of permanent aggression by
Vásquez, and were released and arrested
the state against our ancestral people,
for a second time, the body of q’anjob’al
which have organized in the defense of
leader Pascual Pablo Francisco was
water resources, mountains, Mother Earth,
found in the village of Chancolín, in the
the forests, life itself”, says Rigoberto
municipality of Barillas, with signs of
Juárez Mateo, one of the leaders of the
torture. The community blames Hidro
Plurinational Authority of the Q’anjob’al,
Santa Cruz for his death and the incident
Chuj, Akateko, Poptí and Mestizo People
has heightened tensions between the
of Huehuetenango.
q’anjob’al people, the company and the
With the September elections looming,
authorities.
Juárez fears that these repressive actions
Repressive actions against community
against community leaders will intensify
leaders opposed to extractive industries
and will be disguised as political violence.
and large scale infrastructure projects
On Mar. 24, four days after he was
have increased dramatically under the
—
14
administration of Pérez Molina, say local
human rights organizations.
According to the Unit for the Protection
of Human Rights Defenders-Guatemala
(UDEFEGUA), 657 human rights activists
were attacked in 2013, a number that
increased to 810 in 2014. This figure — the
highest since UDEFEGUA began to record
such incidents in 2000 — includes seven
murders and 21 attempted murders.
One of the worst cases of violence
unleashed by the current government
against indigenous protestors was the
massacre of eight indigenous protestors
from the Northwestern department of
Totonicapán. The peasant leaders were
shot by soldiers using Israeli-manufactured
Galil rifles during a road blockade held in
protest against rising electricity prices in
October 2012.
“This government has militarized
everything and has used force and
repression against protestors and social
movements,” says Norma Sancir, a
reporter for independent news blog
Prensa Comunitaria, who was imprisoned
for five days in September 2014 for
covering a peaceful demonstration in the
eastern department of Chiquimula.
Bad journalism
International observers and NGOs have
also been targeted. In July 2014, two Peace
Brigades International (PBI) observers who
attended the violent eviction of a peaceful
anti-mining protest in the village of La Puya,
located in the municipality of San José del
Golfo, 17.5 miles northeast of Guatemala
City, were told that their residence permits
had been terminated and that they had to
leave the country within a week.
Interior Minister Mauricio López Bonilla
said the case should serve as a “warning”
to all international organizations and
accused foreigners of inciting protests and
manipulating the local population.
A disturbing trend under the current
climate of criminalization of leaders of
the social movements has been the fact
that protestors and the human rights
organizations that support them have
been branded as “terrorists” by the Pérez
Molina administration, a discourse that
“This government has
militarized everything
and has used force
and repression against
protestors and social
movements.”
— NORMA SANCIR
has been echoed by right-wing media and
commentators.
The expose “Sweden funds terrorists in
Guatemala” broadcast by Canal Antigua TV
journalists Sylvia Gereda and Pedro Trujillo
in March 2012 is a clear example of this. The
program accused the Swedish embassy
of funding “organizations that promote
political instability, terrorism and weaken
the state” through cooperation programs
that supported civil society organizations in
the municipality of San Juan Sacatepequez,
20 miles north of Guatemala City, where
indigenous communities have been
protesting against the construction of a
Cementos Progreso cement factory for the
past eight years. At the time, UN Rapporteur
for Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue,
said the program was an example of “bad
journalism”.
The Canal Antigua TV channel is owned
by Minister for Energy and Mining Erick
Archila Dehesa and critics cite this case a
clear example of how mainstream media
outlets have been used to echo corporate
interests.
“The media is controlled by monopolies
and anyone who opposes large scale
infrastructure projects that threaten the
freedom of the people is branded as a
terrorist”, says Sancir. q
15
BOLIVIA
SOCIAL
CONFLICTS IN
THE TIMES OF THE
PLURINATIONAL
STATE
Fernando Valdivia Antisolis in Santa Cruz
C
riminalization
of
social
protest in Bolivia has always
been
associated
with
rebellious actions of social
movements against a state that doesn’t
act in defense of or represent their
interests. In the past this has frequently
led to violent confrontations. But, what
happens when the new state is governed
by a party of the social movements
themselves?
The anthropologist Soledad Valdivia
Rivera contends in her doctoral thesis
that “the Bolivian case shows that the
entrance of social movements into the
political sphere has meant the genuine
participation of groups that were
16
COURTESY OF CEJIS
Indigenous rights clash with a
government that declares it is
defending Good Living.
previously excluded by the dominant
political system,” referring particularly
to the more than thirty indigenous and
original peoples that live in Bolivia.
Consequently, with the approval of
the Political Constitution of the State in
2009, criminalization of social protest
would have taken more subtle forms,
such as the delegitimizing of demands
from the interior of the social movements
that are the protagonists. So understands
Hernán Ávila, director of the Center
of Legal and Social Studies (CEJIS), an
institution linked to the defense of the
indigenous peoples in the country, who
considers that “the outcome of the
process is that the established power
IX Indigenous March in defense of TIPNIS, Feb. 2012.
has been incapable of carrying out the
spirit of the constitutional power” of the
social, indigenous and campesino groups
in particular.
The connecting thread of this theme
is the challenge facing the social change
process, of harmonizing development
policies — whose organizing principle is
economic growth — with the challenges
of Good Living, understood as respect
for nature as expressed in Pachamama,
mother earth, along with other concepts.
Mining and indigenous rights
The biggest conflicts that the
government of President Evo Morales,
in office since 2006, has faced are those
linked to this sui generis contradiction.
This is the case of mining, whose
sustained growth in the last decade
increased environmental pollution
and/or the occupation of indigenous
territories. According to the National
Institute of Statistics, from 25 tons
registered in the year 2000, Bolivia
increased exports to 120,000 tons in
2014. Exports have reached historic
highs in the last decade in Bolivia with
zinc, lead and tin exports generating a
total of US$12.3 billion, according to a
report from the Ministry of Mining of
Feb. 2012.
Among recent complaints of
pollution by mining activities, are
17
those of representatives of the original
communities of Porco, Manquiri and
Cantumarca in the southern department
of Potosí, as well as indigenous groups
from the northern border region with
Brazil and Peru about exploitation of
gold in the Amazon region.
In the first instance, the Declaration
of the Third Meeting of Environmental
Leaders celebrated this past August en
Potosí affirmed that the “Mining and
Metallurgy Law makes individual and
collective rights vulnerable and is in
contradiction of the Political Constitution
of
the
State
and
international
conventions. This mining law does
not recognize the rights of Original
Indigenous Peoples and Campesino
Nations and only benefits the cooperative
The Declaration of
the Third Meeting of
Environmental Leaders
celebrated this past
August en Potosí affirmed
that the “Mining and
Metallurgy Law makes
individual and collective
rights vulnerable and is
in contradiction of the
Political Constitution of
the State and international
conventions.”
18
and salaried mining sector and limits the
application of the right of consultation,
self-government and self-determination
of the Original Indigenous Peoples.” The
government has responded to popular
mobilizations with police repression.
The breaking up a roadblock in Potosí
in July 2014, for example, resulted in
three arrests: Isidoro Jesús, age 39, José
Quispe, age 45, and Román Gómez, age
47. They denounced mistreatment by
the uniformed men.
Silvia Antelo, editor of the daily Sol
de Pando, stated to Noticias Aliadas that
in the department of Pando, that borders
Acre, Brazil and Madre de Dios, Peru, the
exploitation of gold by Brazilian citizens
continues in spite of the government
offer to have prior consultation and
include royalty payments to the
indigenous communities who reside
in the Amazon areas where gold is
abundant for auriferous exploitation.
In July 2010, the then director
of the Agency for the Development
of Macroregions and Frontier Zones
(ADEMAF), Juan Ramón Quintana,
reported
serious
environmental
damages to the flora and fauna of the
region caused by mining operations.
For denouncing this illicit activity,
along with the abuses inflicted upon
the Pacaguara indigenous people by the
timber companies and other corrupt
activities, on July 11, 2011, an edition of
the Sol de Pando was confiscated by
government agents and the newspaper
had to deal with various types of
harassment.
“We suffered criminalization by the
state for defending one of the nations
recognized by the Political Constitution
of the State,” affirmed Antelo.
The case of TIPNIS
The case with the most national and
international resonance has been the
postponed construction of a highway
crossing the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous
Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), that
borders the departments of Beni and
Cochabamba. Since 2011, this proposed
highway mobilized the indigenous
communities of the region both against
and in favor of the project.
In this conflict, however, the
government took a step backwards
and on Feb.10, 2012, it promulgated a
law calling for a consultation with the
communities of TIPNIS. On Dec. 7 of the
same year, the government officially
announced that it had consulted
58 communities of the 69 planned
consultations and found a favorable
position for removing the inviolability
of TIPNIS. However, the International
Federation of Human Rights along with
the Permanent Assembly of Human
Rights of Bolivia, questioned the validity
of the results of the consultation,
concluding in their final report that “the
consultation process was not free, nor
were people informed and the principle
of good faith was not respected.”
Those who opposed the highway
construction and who are against the
government policies that promote
the project should confront criticisms
from within the indigenous movement
of the lowlands (in the Amazon basin)
which led to the formal division of the
Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of
Bolivia (CIDOB) the middle of 2014.
Another example is related to
the struggle for the land. Ávila points
out that the Law 477, called “Against
Subjugation” in force since December
2013, “is nothing but protecting the large
landowner private property.”
The rule establishes sanctions against
“invasions or occupations as well as the
execution of works or improvements,
with violent or peaceful incursions,
temporary or continuous, of one or several
persons who do not prove ownership on
the property, legal possession, rights or
permissions on individual or collective
private properties, assets that are the
patrimony of the state, assets of public
domain or fiscal lands.”
According to Ávila, now “it is
impossible for a social movement that
does not have lands” to have access to
them, given that the rule establishes
mechanisms to sanction and punish
The Bolivian experience
complements the
approval of laws by the
pro-government majority
with a novel form of
criminalization of social
protest marked by the
delegitimizing of demands
from within the social
movements that raise
them.
those who intend to act to occupy them.
The Bolivian experience complements
the approval of laws by the progovernment majority with a novel form of
criminalization of social protest marked
by the delegitimizing of demands from
within the social movements that raise
them. For now the discontent seems to
have been expressed in the result of the
elections for governors and mayors that
took place on Mar. 29. Even if the ruling
party Movement Towards Socialism
(MAS) continues as the first and only
national political force, the setbacks in
departments such as La Paz, where it lost
the control of the local government, are
warnings that the majority that it holds
is not a blank check. q
19
MEXICO
Discontent is reflected in social and political mobilizations which are at risk of being criminalized.
IMPRISONED, DISAPPEARED
AND MURDERED ACTIVISTS
Alberto Buitre in Mexico City
Government is being
blamed for the systematic
planning of forced
disappearances of social
activists.
20
L
a detention and disappearance
of social and human rights
activists, the assassination of
social leaders and the arrest of
others for political reasons are part of “a
government policy” aimed at discouraging
organizations’ resistance to the abuse of
power and repression in Mexico.
the call for our most fundamental human
rights,” said the FNLS in a statement.
For the FNLS, among the 110,000
detained-disappeared are the 43 students
of the “Isidro Burgos” Rural School in
Ayotzinapa, who were massacred on Sep.
26, 2014 by the Iguala Municipal Police, in
the southwestern state of Guerrero, and
were allegedly incinerated in an adjacent
landfill by members of the “Guerreros
Unidos” drug cartel, with orders from the
then-mayor, now imprisoned, José Luis
Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles
Pineda, who have been associated with
organized crime since 2005, according to
information from the Attorney General’s
Office.
The forced disappearances are
systematically planned with “the state’s
acquiescence and responsibility, either by
commission or omission,” says the FNLS.
ALBERTO BUITRE
Social terror
The forced disappearance of persons as
part of the repression of social movements is
So stated the National Front of Struggle
for Socialism (FNLS), a mostly-peasant
political organization with presence in nine
states in Mexico, in the forum on forced
disappearances that convened in January
at the Autonomous University of Puebla,
where two people “are disappeared” per
day, according to the organization.
In Mexico there are more than 110,000
cases of detainees-disappeared, not just
23,000 as the Ministry of the Interior claim.
“More than just a social phenomenon
of great importance and concern, the
forced disappearance of persons is also a
recurrent, systematic practice that has now
become a state policy. Its goal is to silence
the voice of protest, dissent and even
“More than just a social
phenomenon of great
importance and concern,
the forced disappearance of
persons is also a recurrent,
systematic practice that has
now become a state policy.
Its goal is to silence the
voice of protest, dissent and
even the call for our most
fundamental human rights.”
— NATIONAL FRONT OF STRUGGLE
FOR SOCIALISM
21
a systematic state practice with participation
from drug trafficking groups.
Ramón Islas, an academic in human
rights at the Autonomous University of
Mexico City, argues that, in the context of
the war on drugs, the techniques of creating
social terror in the country have evolved.
Islas told Latinamerica Press that today
Mexico is living through a “stage of irregular
warfare” in the war on drugs, during which
unidentified drug or criminal gangs are also
involved in the disappearance of people.
“Throughout the entire Mexican
territory, the blood of the working people
is being scattered. It is reflected, coupled
with the thousands of disappeared
detainees, in extrajudicial executions and
unjust imprisonment. What was initially
thought to be a climate of fear exclusive
to northern cities [main operation
centers for various drug cartels], today
this crime lab is spreading to all corners
of the country,” said Islas.
“In addition to the detention and
forced disappearance of persons, there are
new forms of repression, such as drying
“Throughout the entire
Mexican territory, the blood
of the working people
is being scattered. It is
reflected, coupled with the
thousands of disappeared
detainees, in extrajudicial
executions and unjust
imprisonment.”
— RAMÓN ISLAS
22
“In addition to the detention
and forced disappearance
of persons, there are new
forms of repression, such
as drying up a community’s
water supply, burning crops
and huts, sexual assault and
the criminalization of social
protest.”
— RAMÓN ISLAS
up a community’s water supply, burning
crops and huts, sexual assault and the
criminalization of social protest,” explained
Islas.
In 2013, 13 social activists were killed in
the state of Guerrero. The majority were
killed for opposing local chiefdoms who
exploited the peasants of the area with the
state government’s knowledge. So states
the Peasant Organization of the Southern
Sierra, whose leader, Rocío Mesino
Mesino, was shot in October of that year.
Her father, Hilario Mesino directly blamed
governor Ángel Aguirre for the death of
his daughter, and he said in statements
quoted by the newspaper El Sur Acapulco
that during Aguirre’s administration,
“repression and criminalization against
social organizations and community
leaders has intensified.” To date, there are
no persons charged for the crime.
Political prisoners
There are also social activists
imprisoned for political reasons. So far
into the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto,
who took office in December 2012, there
have been 350 political prisoners.
The data are provided by the Free
Nestora Committee, a civil organization
that supports Nestora Salgado García,
commander of the Community Police of
the municipality of Olinalá, Guerrero, who
was arrested in August 2013 on charges
of kidnapping, but whose detention,
according to her defense, is based on
political causes.
The Free Nestora Committee notes
that Salgado García is being politically
criminalized,
falsely
accused
of
kidnapping, based on an operation that
led to the dismantling of a network of sex
trafficking of women and girls in Europe
and Colombia, who were forced into
prostitution in bars in Guerrero and other
states in Mexico.
The organization adds that the case
of Salgado García shows the “Mexican
government’s stigmatization against
Community Police”, a security and justice
initiative of Guerrero rural communities
that began in 1996 encouraged by the
Regional Coordinator of Community
Authorities and the Union of Peoples and
Organizations of the State of Guerrero,
to address the rising force of paramilitary
and drug trafficking groups.
According to the data provided by
the Free Nestora Committee, of the 350
political prisoners, 13 are community
police members imprisoned in Guerrero
and four opponents to the La Parota
dam, also in Guerrero. There are also
some detainees recorded in the state of
Puebla for opposing the construction of a
thermoelectric plant.
But the largest number of political
prisoners is recorded in the state of
Michoacán, where more than 300
members of self-defense groups —
created in 2013 with the support of the
federal government to fight the drug
cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios —
have been imprisoned, including one of
the self-defense groups’ founders, José
Manuel Mireles Valverde, arrested in June
2014 for illegal possession of arms for the
exclusive use of the Army.
According to the data
provided by the Free
Nestora Committee, of the
350 political prisoners, 13 are
community police members
imprisoned in Guerrero
and four opponents to
the La Parota dam, also in
Guerrero.
However, Talia Vázquez Alatorre,
a lawyer committed to the defense of
all prisoners belonging to self-defense
groups, argued at that time that Mireles
Valverde was a “political prisoner” for
the improper legal procedures followed
during his arrest.
In November 2014, the former leader
of the self-defense groups accepted a
“conditional political agreement” with the
Ministry of the Interior for gain his release.
The arrests for political reasons even
reach the capital. Must be highlighted
the case of Mario González, imprisoned
for a year by the government of the
Federal District for his participation in
the demonstrations of Oct. 2, 2013 in the
capital, on the 46th commemoration of
the student massacre perpetrated by the
Army in Tlatelolco in 1968.
While authorities continue banning
social protest and treating social activists
as delinquents, human rights organizations
launch campaigns declaring that protest is
a right. The National Network “All Rights
for All” (Red TDT) launched in 2008 the
campaign “Protest is a right, repression
is a crime” and had to relaunch it in 2013
due to increased policies of criminalization
of the right to dissent and protest and the
impunity with which these policies are
applied. q
23
24
25
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
FRAN MARTÍNEZ
Interview with Grabiel Sánchez, leader of
a social organization.
Grabiel Sánchez.
T
he Broad Front for Popular Struggle
(FALPO) is an social organization that
is accompanying popular demands
processes in the Dominican Republic since
its founding in 1985. The FALPO used to be
a radical movement that staged violent
protests, but these protests have changed
in recent years as the organization has opted
for national demonstrations that are, as they
say, civic, democratic and massive. Since the
inception of FALPO, its members have been
persecuted, repressed and killed by police,
says Grabiel Sánchez, national spokesman
for the organization for three years and
23-years member. One of the most violent
scenes, he narrates, happened in June 2012
during a protest over the death of an athlete
at the hands of police officers in the town of
Salcedo, Hermanas Mirabal province, 155 km
from Santo Domingo, the capital. According
to Sánchez, the police fired at the crowd in
an episode that resulted in 22 injured and
four dead, according to figures collected by
the press.
Gabriela Read, Latinamerica Press
collaborator, spoke with Sánchez about
26
“HERE
PROTESTS
ARE NOT
CRIMINALIZED;
HERE
PROTESTERS
ARE KILLED
OR HURT”
the government persecution against
demonstrators.
There are some who criticize the FALPO
for its violent methods of social protest.
What can you say about this?
Some people have wanted to stigmatize
the FALPO as a group of violent struggle.
But for the last five years we have been
dismantling that perception. These days
we have been able to hold many protests in
which no tires are burnt, and our objectives
are achieved. Always in towns, mainly in
small towns, there is a tendency to take
away legitimacy to protests we hold, but
most of the people accept them. We ask
them to stay home and not go to school
or work, not open their businesses, and at
the end of the day we march to show the
support of the community.
Did the FALPO view violent struggle as a
valid method of protest?
In many of these struggles, the ones who
initiated violence were security agencies:
the police and army, and sometimes
paramilitary organizations with the aim of
spilling blood, causing grief, and to discredit
the organizers of the demonstrations. At
other times, the people themselves were
those who responded to the offensive
attacks by these organizations. When you
hold a protest and bullets are thrown at
you, people defend themselves. And the
FALPO also caused some of these actions
such as throwing stones against shots fired
at them, setting tires on fire, all of that.
At what point did this change of
methods of struggle occur and why?
Since 2010 we were proposing that, but
it has been applied since 2012. We noted that
in the process of struggle we spearheaded,
the police and military repression was
very strong, brutal, and we were getting
beat by the security agencies, losing great
leaders who were killed, sometimes shot
and crippled, and sometimes their families
forced them to disassociate from the
struggle, and we were losing ground among
the people because where there are shots
and bullets, people don’t get closer. We
did an analysis and understood that, given
this situation, it was necessary to change
the methods of struggle. The method the
FALPO currently uses is civic, democratic
and of mass protest.
What is the most common reaction of
the authorities to the protests?
The most common reaction is violence
with shots. Three years ago, we called a
strike in Salcedo and senior military and
police officers called our leaders asking them
to end the strike or face the consequences.
Police and soldiers went into the village with
war weapons, killing people, and five died;
34 people were injured, some had to have
their legs amputated [figures collected by
reporters mention about 22 injured and
four dead]. That was a massacre, and even
today there is no single person who takes
responsibility for those actions.
What media treatments do FALPO
manifestations receive?
Local media are very radical against
FALPO, but the national media is not. The
national media does not have many small
interests within the towns. Here, there is
a network of journalists and media that
respond to the Dominican government;
they are paid and their objective is to take
away the credibility from any protest or any
citizen who disagrees with the government.
The press gives us some level of space. But
the press prefers a violent strike to a march.
Because violent strike has deaths, there’s
blood, and that is covered immediately.
Are there cases of arbitrary arrests and
house burglaries?
The FALPO has been a very battered
organization; its leaders have been greatly
suppressed. The founding leader, Jesús
Rafael Diplan Martínez (Chú), was brutally
murdered [by joint military and police
troops on Sept. 28, 1990, after a three day
strike]. That’s just one case. In Navarrete
[in the northwest of the country] we
can count dozens of murdered leaders,
countless wounded comrades, mostly
during the police administration of Pedro
de Jesús Candelier and Rafael Guillermo
Guzmán Fermín, former heads of the
National Police [between 1999 and 2002
and 2007 and 2010, respectively]. Guzmán
Fermín, nicknamed “the surgeon”, was
known for giving orders to shoot the
popular leaders in the knees to cripple
them. Some had to have their legs
amputated, and many others were killed.
Throughout the country, the FALPO has a
trail of leaders who have been shot, mainly
in their lower limbs.
Do you think that protest is criminalized
in the Dominican Republic?
The criminalization of protest is a
strategy of governments worldwide to take
away the legitimacy of and minimize protest,
stop it from a legal point of view. Here we
see that protest is not criminalized; here
protesters are killed or injured. There isn’t
a way for the state to increase penalties for
leaders or popular groups. Here they shoot
them in the legs to leave them disabled
or in the heart or the head to kill them.
Criminalizing protest is very bad. It is a state
action to reduce the levels of protest, the
size and intensity. But here it is worse: here
leaders who protest are killed. q
27
ARGENTINA
Court session in Zapala, Neuquén, in which charges are brought against Relmu Ñamku, Martín Maliqueo and
Mauricio Rain.
CRIMINALIZATION OF
PROTESTS SPREADS TO THE
PERIPHERY
Indigenous communities
and citizen assemblies are
victims of repression for
their resistance to natural
resource extraction projects.
28
I
Hernán Scandizzo in Buenos Aires
n recent years criminalization of
social protest in Argentina has spread
from the large urban centers to
the periphery, particularly protests
organized to support indigenous territorial
demands and struggles in defense of
common lands led by socio-environmental
assemblies.
“The state does not have
a political proposal to
integrate or incorporate
indigenous demands
with respect to the selfdetermination of peoples.”
CARLOS DARÍO MARTÍNEZ
— EDUARDO HUALPA
“In the 1990s, the state response
to the demands of unemployed people
was clearly criminalization and, in recent
years identified as kirchnerism, it is not so
much repression which is the mechanism
by which protests are broken up,”
claimed Eduardo Hualpa, president of the
Association of Lawyers for Indigenous
rights (AADI), to Latinamerica Press.
“There are other mechanisms, there are
complicated dialogues, there are some
who say there is cooptation, others who
say that there is the incorporation of
political projects; but, definitely, there are
other phenomena in play that don’t happen
in the case of the demands of indigenous
communities or institutions. The state does
not have a political proposal to integrate
or incorporate indigenous demands with
respect to the self-determination of
peoples,” he added.
The jurist Alberto Binder, member
of the board of directors of the LatinAmerican Institute for Democratic Security
(ILSED), agreed with the analysis of Hualpa,
although he pointed out that in the urban
areas a change in the state’s response has
begun to take shape, a “greater repression”
is being used against labor commissions
of the leftist-classist tendencies that
have departed from the “channels of
standard negotiation” used by the union
bureaucracy.
Binder regretted that the national
government has not persisted in order
that the protocols of state interventions
in social protests are implemented by
provincial police. According to the jurist,
the application of these procedural norms,
in whose development human rights
organizations such as the Center for Legal
and Social Studies and the Permanent
Assembly for Human Rights participated,
would avoid or reduce violence in instances
of repression.
The report, “Minimum Criteria for
the Actions of Police and Security Forces
in Public Demonstrations”, released in
29
2011 by the Ministry of National Security
Indigenous protest
establishes, among other points, that the
For Hualpa, the indigenous people
intervention of forces will be progressive,
“again appear to limit the economic and
beginning with dialogue with the protest
productive development of the country.
organizers; prohibits the police that could
We return to the texts of Domingo Faustino
have direct contact with the demonstrators,
Sarmiento, of Juan Bautista Alberdi, of
carry firearms — a measure in effect since
the 19th century [that introduced the
2010 nationwide —, also prohibits the use
dichotomy ‘civilization or barbarism’],” he
of tear gas guns and limit the use of rubber
declared.
bullets.
On April 13 charges were brought
Due to the decrease in social protests
against three Mapuche leaders from the
in urban areas, led in some cases by
Neuquén province, in Patagonia, Argentina:
social movements echoing the demands
Relmu Ñamku was accused of homicidal
of peasants, indigenous and sociointent, and the werken (messenger), Martin
environmental assemblies, “the middle
Maliqueo, and the logko (political authority),
class has begun to look at these problems
Mauricio Raín, were charged of severe
as remote from themselves, so this makes
damages. The court case was originated in
these causes remain hidden,” warned
the Winkul Newen community’s resistance
Binder. According to the jurist, the loss of
to the exploitation of hydrocarbons in their
presence in urban centers has weakened
territory.
the causes of the original peoples and of the
On Dec. 28, 2012, conflicts occurred
socio-environmental assemblies that “have
when a judicial employee accompanied
minimal support structure” and “paves the
by police and representatives of the
way for increased repression by provincial
Apache petroleum company tried to notify
governments.”
the community of their eviction due to
“The defense structure of the human
an official request of the company that
rights groups in the provinces is minimal
intended to enter and work the oilfield,
and it is difficult for the larger human rights
which had been immobilized by the
organizations in Buenos Aires to get there,”
Mapuche. During the conflict, the justice
he added.
official, Verónica Pelayes, was wounded in
On the other hand, in his analysis
the face by a rock.
about the advances and setbacks on
The state prosecutor and the plaintiffs
criminalization, Binder emphasized the
will ask for a sentence of 15 years in prison
Antiterrorist Law, whose reform was
for Ñamku. If she is found guilty, the case
approved in December 2011. The jurist
could establish a negative precedent not
cautioned that the definition of terrorism
only for indigenous demands but for social
is not precise, and leaves a wide margin for
protests in general.
interpretation and application.
“Now terrorism is
any crime in the Penal
Code that is done with
On April 13 charges were brought against
terrorist purpose; that
is to say, with the end of
three Mapuche leaders from the Neuquén
terrorizing, of imposing
conditions on public province, in Patagonia, Argentina. The court
authorities,” he said. The
previous law, product of a
case was originated in the Winkul Newen
reform in 2007, penalized
the participation in an community’s resistance to the exploitation of
illicit association with the
purpose of generating
hydrocarbons in their territory.
terror in the population
and the financing of
terrorist organizations.
30
“Clearly with this judgment comes a
warning to the communities to beware,”
affirmed Darío Kosovsky, defense lawyer
for the Mapuche. “There is an authoritarian
criminal policy in the Neuquén’s Public
Ministry because there is no legal basis
for this type of judgment that is being
attempted to be applied in this case.”
“The conflict is not about the throwing
of a rock and the wound of this person, which
is lamentable, but rather the real conflict is
between the state, the petroleum company
and the community. This fact remains as an
adjustment variable to avoid any kind of
resistance,” emphasized Kosovsky.
“This court case, besides the persons
involved, has a more profound meaning;
to create the domino effect, to bring the
weight of the Penal Code on everyone who
struggles against petroleum exploitation
in the way that is occurring in Neuquén,”
claims Ñamku. The Mapuche leader
emphasized that the trial is a disciplining
message “directed to all who oppose
fracking.”
Petroleum criminalization
Along the same lines, the exploitation
of hydrocarbons in Vaca Muerta, one of
the main fields of shale oil and shale gas in
the world, where fracking have unleashed
territorial conflicts with the neighboring
town of Añelo, should be mentioned. On
Aug. 13, the Campo Maripe community
suffered a fire of two homes, a community
center and a warehouse after the provincial
legislature approved the YPF-Chevron
project to extract shale petroleum and gas
in the area of Loma Campana, in a territory
that the Mapuche claim as their own.
The exploitation of Vaca Muerta has
generated a demographic explosion in
Añelo by the possible jobs in the petroleum
industry. In 2010 the area had 2,449
inhabitants, according the Population
Census, and in 2015 would grow to 13,736
inhabitants, according to Idom, a consulting
firm. This situation has overwhelmed
the provincial and municipal capacity to
respond so the company’s contributions
are very important. For example, the
YPF Foundation with the Inter-American
Bank for Development have developed
“This court case, besides the
persons involved, has a more
profound meaning; to create the
domino effect, to bring the weight
of the Penal Code on everyone
who struggles against petroleum
exploitation in the way that is
occurring in Neuquén.” The trial
is a disciplining message “directed
to all who oppose fracking.”
— RELMU ÑAMKU
guidelines for the urban design of Añelo
to accomodate its growth. Also, the
Argentine petroleum company through its
foundation, as well as the French company
Total, will finance the works to increase the
supply of potable water in the area and
have provided assistance to education and
health centers.
In this regard, the federal prosecutor
in Neuquen, María Cristina Beute, has
expressed her concern about the financial
contribution by the oil companies to ensure
a wider deployment of police in the area.
“The Police function belongs to the
State, it shouldn’t be outsourced, much
less be put in the hands of someone with
interests, such as not allowing production
to stop. Security will then be organized in
function of this economic interest and all
that impedes it will be resolved in a manner
that suits them,” warned Beute. q
31
PARAGUAY
GOVERNMENT
FREE TO
REPRESS
Gustavo Torres y Paulo López in Asunción
P
easant organizations’ demands
for access to land and
adequate food are answered
with government repression
and criminalization of the organizations’
leaders.
The most emblematic case of
repression and criminalization of the
struggle for land in Paraguay’s recent
history is the Curuguaty massacre.
Curuguaty is located in the eastern
department of Canindeyú, about 270
km (168 miles) northeast of Asuncion,
and it is where 11 peasants and six
policemen were killed. On June 15, 2012
a squad of more than 300 police officers
brought a warrant to evict a camp with
32
PAULO LÓPEZ
Authorities use various
strategies to criminalize rural
populations and peasants
who defend their lands or
demand the return of these.
just over 60 peasants who had occupied
the “Campo Morumbi” estate in the
district of Curuguaty. The peasants
demanded the return of some 2,000
hectares of public property usurped in
recent decades by the former president
from the right-wing Colorado Party, Blas
N. Riquelme. These were the events
that the Congress used as a pretext
to impeach President Fernando Lugo
(2008-2012) a week later.
The peasant leader Rubén Villalta
was arrested in Sept. 2012 for the death
of the police officers in Curuguaty,
while no one has been charged with
the death of the 11 peasants. The trial
against the 13 peasants accused in this
Annual march of the National Peasant Federation in Asuncion to demand agrarian reform and against agro-export
model.
case, who face charges of trespassing
property and criminal association, has
been postponed by the court on several
occasions.
Villalta, who was excluded from
the case, has been in custody for
29 months and has been on three
hunger strikes. However, Villalba was
sentenced in February to seven years
in prison for his alleged involvement in
another case: obstructing the work of a
prosecution investigative unit in 2008
that was investigating the complaint
of the owners of a soybean farm in
Pindó, in the Yasy Cañy district, in the
northeastern department of Canindeyú.
The peasants claimed that the owners
of this property were fumigating crops
without following minimum security
measures. Villalta was charged with
crimes of “illegal arrest, grave coercion
and duress.”
With the deepening of the agroexport model by the current government
of Horacio Cartes, organizations and
communities are even more determined
to prevent the fumigation of crops
and cultivation of transgenic varieties
in their communities. For this cause,
organizations like the National Peasant
Federation (FNC) — with a strong
presence especially in the northern
departments of San Pedro, Concepción
and Canindeyú, which are major soy
33
producing areas — put themselves on
the line to prevent deforestation or
fumigation.
In response, the government
provides
police
protection
to
agribusinesses that fumigate and act
in violation of environmental laws.
The laws on the use of agrochemicals
prohibit the use of “chemical defense” at
100 meters from any human settlement,
local road or stream and require the
treated plots to have a living barrier of
at least two meters in height and five
meters in width.
Even though most monoculture plots
do not meet these requirements, the
government deploys police operations
to repress and detain peasant farmers.
Added to this is a well-oiled judicial
machinery that has indicted more than
a thousand rural inhabitants who have
risen up against the damage caused in
their communities by glyphosate, which
kills their animals, crops and has triggered
cases of malformations and cancer in
people exposed to the fumigations,
even among the urban population that
consumes the products treated or
contaminated with agrochemicals. The
latter is a fact according to studies by
researchers from the clinical hospital
Among the strategies used to
persecute rural organizations,
Sachelaridi mentions methods
of “self-coup” — referring
to a possible set up to frame
peasants who claim a plot
of land — by landowners
themselves to fabricate an
excuse to persecute farmers.
34
associated with the School of Medicine
of the National University of Asunción.
The latifundio
Diosnel
Sachelaridi,
Secretary
General of the Organization of Struggle
for Land (OLT), argues that the main
problem that must be fought are the
latifundios, or large estates, and the
export model that is dependent on the
production of commodities. In contrast
to this production model, he sees the
need for a state policy to industrialize
raw materials so that development
reaches everyone and not only a handful
of agricultural exporters who manage
the soybean and meat businesses,
including the US company Monsanto,
which has the largest presence in the
country.
Among
the
strategies
used
to persecute rural organizations,
Sachelaridi mentions methods of “selfcoup” — referring to a possible set
up to frame peasants who claim a plot
of land — by landowners themselves
to fabricate an excuse to persecute
farmers. The last episode that created
major tension is one that occurred
on March 28 in the Pindó estate,
located in Naranjito, Yvyrarovaná
district, Canindeyú department, where,
according to the official version, some
150 peasants — who demanded the
return of 5,000 Ha of land — attacked a
facility by burning machinery and tanks.
The losses reported by the company
range from US$500,000 to $1 million. In
relation to this episode, OLT members
Benigno Coronel, Milciades Coronel
and Epifanio Giménez were accused
on charges of aggravated robbery,
criminal association, grave coercion,
threat of criminal offenses and creating
security threats. Sachelaridi rejected
the accusations and said that setting
facilities on fire is not a method peasants
use to fight for land.
Consulted by Latinamerica Press,
Ramón Medina Velazco, Organization
Secretary of the Popular Socialist
Convergence Party (PCPS) — which
is part of the Guasu Front of former
President Lugo and part of the
Democratic Congress of the People
(CDP) — emphatically stated that
President
Cartes
accumulated
“superpowers” from the moment he
got approval for the PPP law (Public
Private Partnership), which allows
him to privatize assets, resources and
public entities, and the amendment of
the National Defense and Homeland
Security Law to militarize the country
without the consent of Congress.
Since Aug. 23, 2013, eight days after
Cartes assumed the presidency, the
legislation that amends the National
Defense and Homeland Security Law has
been in force, enabling the president
to use the military to enforce internal
mission orders without declaring a state
of emergency and without congressional
approval.
Cartes made the decision to
modify the law when, two days after
his inauguration, four workers and a
policeman were found dead in an estate
in the department of San Pedro (300
km north of Asunción). The policeman
worked as an armed guard in the cattle
farm during his “free time.” The attack
was attributed to the Paraguayan
People’s Army (EPP).
Repression and death
In late November 2014, the
humanitarian
organization
Service
Peace and Justice-Paraguay (SERPAJ)
— which monitors and analyzes the
effects of militarization in society as a
state security policy — submitted to
the Human Rights Commission of the
House of Representatives testimonies
of residents of the militarized zone
in the departments of San Pedro and
Concepción. These testimonies reveal
repression and death at the hands of
the combined forces in the north of the
country.
On Nov. 15, 2014, members of the
Joint Task Force (FTC) — a group made
up of police and military members that
was created by presidential decree
on Aug. 24, 2013, allegedly to repel
the armed groups in the north of the
In such operations, the
troops commit abuse
and arrest civilians with
suspicions that, in many
cases, cannot be sustained
by the Public Ministry,
which is later obligated to
dismiss the charges.
country — killed Vicente Ojeda, a
29-year-old father and resident of the
rural settlement Arroyito, Núcleo 4, in
an operation that, the task force said,
went after members of the EPP and the
Armed Peasant Group (ACA). In such
operations, the troops commit abuse
and arrest civilians with suspicions that,
in many cases, cannot be sustained
by the Public Ministry, which is later
obligated to dismiss the charges.
“The only tools available to the
people against the abuse of the
Executive are citizen mobilizations, and
in that sense, the People’s Democratic
Congress represents the space to
articulate the discontent against the
unpopular and repressive policies of
Cartes’s government,” says Medina
Velazco.
In this context of state violence
and closure of institutional avenues
to channel complaints, organizations
assume that the only way is keep going
in the constant struggle for agrarian
reform in a country where, according to
data from the agricultural census, 2.6
percent of farms have 85.5 percent of
the land. q
35
HONDURAS
Support demonstration for peasant leader Magdalena Morales, one of the 700 women criminalized for fighting for
land.
PEASANTS VICTIMS OF
CRIMINALIZATION
Thousands of peasant
women and men have been
imprisoned for demanding
land reform.
36
H
Jennifer Ávila in Tegucigalpa
onduras is one of the poorest
and most violent countries
in the world. This poverty
and violence directly affects
the vulnerable sectors of society, such as
peasants, who have recently denounced
the criminalization of 4,200 peasants,
HTTP://RADIOPROGRESOHN.NET/
“There is a serious agrarian crisis, and
there is an exclusion of a large group of farm
workers as a result of the application of the
neoliberal model since 1992,” Alegría told
Latinamerica Press.
The peasants demand a new law for land
reform in the country. Many organizations
have begun a process of land recuperation,
especially in the Aguán and Sula valleys in
the north of the country, with land richest in
natural resources and the most productive.
“The peasants occupy the land in
response to the inability of the National
Agrarian Institute (INA), to address [their
demand for land]. For this, the peasants are
severely criminalized; there are around 4,200
peasants who have gone to jail in just four
years, and more than 162 peasants killed,
including many in Bajo Aguán; 723 women
have been in jail and now they have to comply
with alternatives measures to prison like
signing each week in court. That generates
enormous economic harm to peasants
because they don’t have enough money
for even the [transportation] ticket, or food
and they miss the workday. It’s a situation of
severe economic impact,” said Alegría.
The peasants are prosecuted on charges
such as illegal usurpation of land, damage to
private property and even sedition.
A 70 percent of the more than 8 million
people of Honduras live in poverty, and half of
the 4 million peasants have no access to land
due to the land monopoly by a few, which
keeps peasants mired in extreme poverty.
The Agricultural Sector Development
Modernization Law, approved in 1992 by
the government of former President Rafael
Leonardo Callejas (1990-94), broke up the
land reform process initiated in 1960 and
divided the peasant movement when it made
way for the negotiations of the land. Many
700 of whom are women, according to
the international organization La Vía
Campesina.
According to Rafael Alegría, current
deputy in the National Congress and leader
of the international organization La Vía
Campesina the situation
for peasants is very
difficult, even more “There are around 4,200 peasants who have
serious in the context gone to jail in just four years, and more than
of repression and the
food crisis characterized 162 peasants killed, 723 women have been in jail
by shortages of basic and now they have to comply with alternatives
grains and meats in measures to prison like signing each week in court.”
Honduras due to climate
change and conflict in
RAFAEL ALEGRÍA
agriculture.
—
37
cooperatives were broken up by the lack of
support for production, and big businessmen
offered to buy them. Because of this, a bill
to revive the agrarian reform and make it
more comprehensive and inclusive has been
introduced. But, it has been already a year
without any discussion of this matter in the
legislature.
The official version
To find a way to resolve this situation,
peasants have mobilized and protested
at various times this year in front of the
National Congress, the Supreme Court and
even the INA.
For the director of the INA, Ramón Lara,
the number that peasant organizations
release about criminalized people is not
real, and he ensures that there are many
misunderstandings in regards to the issue
of evictions.
“All prosecutions are related to the
legal nature of the land; they go to court
proceedings because courts must show
who the real owners of the land are, and
there are trials that last 8 to 10 years and
when that time passes, they are given
eviction notices. So sometimes the farmer
does not understand that after having the
land for so many years, he is evicted. We
have intervened so that the legal actions
[against them] are removed, entering in
joint ventures with them and in some cases
we have avoided more deaths in the land
dispute. We believe that the 4,200 figure
is not real, that is to draw attention. [The
number of imprisoned peasants] definitely
does not reach this number. I’m not saying
that there are no cases, but it’s not in that
dimension,” Lara told Latinamerica Press.
He also states that the INA is responsible
for investigating how many prosecution
cases of peasants exist.
Lara also believes that the problem
is less from the government and more a
responsibility of the peasants themselves,
who have not understood, according to
him, the value of the land, and when they
have the opportunity to sell it without
thinking that the state itself has invested
heavily in the land.
“We want the spirit of land reform to
reach all peasants. Daily, we live conflicts
38
that used to be between agricultural
entrepreneurs and peasants, but now more
than 80 percent of the conflicts we have are
a struggles among peasants themselves”,
ensures Lara.
Lara has called the whole process of
land reform a “failure” because peasants
sold their land, even when the government
created the Agricultural Modernization Law
in 1992, replacing the Agrarian Reform Law
and allowing peasants to sell the land amid
a situation of poverty and abandonment
that the state itself had caused among the
peasants, who at that time had land but
had no support for production.
Repression against peasant women
Magdalena Morales, of the National
Confederation of Farm Workers (CNTC),
was imprisoned, accused by the company
Azucarera del Norte (AZUNOSA), part of
the South African transnational SABMiller,
of land robbery, damages and sustained
damages. Morales was arrested on July
The Agricultural Sector
Development Modernization
Law, approved in 1992 by
the government of former
President Rafael Leonardo
Callejas (1990-94), broke
up the land reform process
initiated in 1960 and divided
the peasant movement
when it made way for the
negotiations of the land. Many
cooperatives were broken
up by the lack of support
for production, and big
businessmen offered to buy
them.
27, 2013, imprisoned and assigned to a
female judge, who dictated precautionary
measures as an alternative to prison,
forcing her to sign in each week in court.
Morales is a peasant leader in Yoro, in
northern Honduras, and she ensures that
women are the most affected by this
crisis.
Morales and 108 others, including
three underage girls, were prosecuted
because of this land restoration process
in Yoro.
“We were imprisoned, [had to go]
to court to sign in. Even now with our
own efforts, we have helped release
one third of our co-workers, but we
still have 35 peasant co-workers under
judicial measures. It is regrettable that,
in Honduras, transnational corporations
have rights but we Hondurans are
displaced to the riverbanks as if we have
no right to life. I have children; I had to
tell them to not even mention my name;
I had to take one of my daughters out of
school because many asked about me, I
feared repression. In another case against
the CAHSA [Honduran Sugar Company],
also in this sector, three co-workers were
killed and no one is paying for these
crimes with jail time”, Morales said in an
interview with Latinamerica Press.
The killings occur during land
recuperation processes and remain
unpunished.
Like Morales, many rural women are
prosecuted for their struggle to recover
land.
“We have 2 million landless peasants,
single mothers who seek to give their
families a better life. When we want to
recover a parcel of land to improve our
situation, we are criminalized. We rural
women are being killed and criminalized,
my organization alone has 700 who are
sentenced and are going to sign in at
the court, two co-workers were killed,
nine children were abandoned; that has
to be a government responsibility”, says
Morales.
The current government of President
Juan Orlando Hernández affirms he
supports farm workers and ensures
having restored order in Bajo Aguán, but
“We have 2 million landless
peasants, single mothers who
seek to give their families a
better life. When we want
to recover a parcel of land
to improve our situation, we
are criminalized. We rural
women are being killed and
criminalized, my organization
alone has 700 who are
sentenced and are going to sign
in at the court, two co-workers
were killed, nine children were
abandoned; that has to be a
government responsibility.”
— MAGDALENA MORALES
Morales says this support is actually for
the landlords, not inland peasants.
“[The government] gives them
projects, irrigation systems, and we
the peasants are being replaced by the
landowners. On our behalf, [landowners]
receive large amounts of money that
are to favor small and medium-sized
producers. We watch the news that say
the government favors peasants; earlier
this year we had a sit-in at the INA because
they want to close it, at the Supreme
Court because the judges are involved
with the imprisonment of farmers and at
the National Congress to demand a law
for comprehensive agrarian reform. We
will continue in the streets to demand our
rights”, Morales concluded. q
39
BRAZIL
HARSH POLICE
REPRESSION
AGAINST SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
José Pedro Martins in São Paulo
B
razil is distinguished by various
international organizations —
including the United Nations
— as a model for poverty
reduction. Various government social
programs like Bolsa Familia, or Family
Grant, have lifted 36 million people out of
poverty since 2003. However, as a symbol
of the country’s typical contradictions,
poverty remains criminalized, as are social
movements fighting for greater justice
and dignity for Brazilian citizens.
“Violence is a very present and
visible element of poverty in Brazil; it
disproportionately affects the poorest
communities in both urban and rural
areas, and in turn, further exacerbates
this poverty. In addition, state agents
40
ADRIANO ROSA
Citizen initiatives seek to
prevent the criminalization of
protests.
responsible for security tend to stereotype
the poor, particularly the inhabitants of
the favelas, as ‘criminals’,” according to
“A criminalização da pobreza – Relatório
sobre as causas econômicas, sociais e
culturais da tortura e outras formas de
violência no Brasil” (“The criminalization
of poverty: A report on the economic,
social and cultural root causes of torture
and other forms of violence in Brazil”),
published in March 2010 by the Center for
Global Justice, the World Organization
Against Torture and the National
Movement of Street Children.
What is most serious in the Brazilian
context is that the action of social
movements fighting to definitively
overcome poverty and social injustice
Mass demonstrations in June 2013 demanding the government increased investment in health, education, housing,
basic sanitation.
“Violence is a very present and
visible element of poverty in
Brazil; it disproportionately
affects the poorest
communities in both urban and
rural areas, and in turn, further
exacerbates this poverty.”
—
REPORT ON THE ECONOMIC,
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ROOT CAUSES
OF TORTURE AND OTHER FORMS OF
VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL
are also being harshly criminalized.
Furthermore, the National Congress is
processing bills that would modify the
Penal Code and criminalize actions during
large demonstrations, and in other cases.
These parliamentary initiatives stem
from actions by social movements in
various places, and especially the large
demonstrations that took place in June
2013 in dozens of Brazilian cities.
Crime of terrorism
This is the case of 2011 Senate Bill
(PLS) 728, which sought to criminalize
terrorism, aimed specifically at the
hosting of the FIFA World Cup in July 2014.
It was not approved. However, another
bill was introduced shortly after the June
41
movements
is
already
happening in Brazil. The
debate resurfaced with
“We are totally against any kind of
force during the harsh
criminalization of social movements. We police crackdown on a
demonstration by striking
consider it a legitimate right to protest and teachers in the southern
state of Paraná.
mobilize.”
On Apr. 29, more than
200 people were injured
in the police offensive
PAULO PAIM
against the teachers. The
repression, which included
tear gas, rubber bullets and
2013 demonstrations, coinciding with
even
dogs,
generated
a wave of protests
Brazil holding the Confederations Cup, a
across the country.
pre-FIFA World Cup tournament.
Days later, on May 6, a hearing of the
A joint committee of 14 deputies and
Federal
Senate Commission for Human
senators proposed Bill 499 in November
Rights
and
Participatory Legislation was
2013, defining terrorism as “causing or
held to discuss the issue. “We express
inflicting terror or widespread panic
concern that the violence generated
through aggression or attempted
between the strikers and security
aggression against life, body or health,
forces of Paraná showed the inability of
or deprivation of personal liberty” and
institutions, including demonstrators, to
mandates 15 to 30 years in prison for
those convicted of the crime.
Due to lack of consensus, the bill did
not pass before the FIFA World Cup, but
still can be put to a vote at any time. For
many human rights organizations, this
legislation would mean an even harsher
Even without the approval
criminalization of social movements.
of specific bills, the
“The [FIFA World] Cup happened,
the bill was not approved, and there
criminalization of social
was none of the chaos forecasters say
would occur regarding violence against
movements is already
our guests. There was not any violence
happening in Brazil. The
against people who came to watch the
World Cup in Brazil,” said Senator Paulo
debate resurfaced with
Paim of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Rio
Grande do Sul, one of the most critical
force during the harsh
voices against of parliamentary initiatives
police crackdown on a
aimed at criminalizing social movements.
“We are totally against any kind of
demonstration by striking
criminalization of social movements. We
teachers in the southern
consider it a legitimate right to protest
and mobilize. I very much applauded
state of Paraná.
the demonstations in June and July
2013, when people went to the streets,
protesting and demanding greater
investment in health, education, housing,
basic sanitation,” the senator added.
Even without the approval of
specific bills, the criminalization of social
—
42
manage the crisis and dialogue. This is
a fundamental issue of democracy. We
are willing to discuss and mediate in the
current conflict which emerged under this
situation,” Irina Karla Bacci, Human Righs
advocate of the presidency’s Human
Rights Secretariat, said during a hearing.
Popular response
“It was not a confrontation. It was a
massacre. A confrontation is when the
forces are balanced and there, in that
moment, they were not. I was there
representing the Senate. I experienced
and saw what happened. What we
saw were two hours of tear gas, dogs,
shooting rubber bullets,” Senator Gleise
Hoffmann, of the PT of Paraná, said at the
same hearing.
On the other hand, there has been
firm action by the social movements
themselves and other sectors against the
criminalization of protest. In late 2014, for
example, the Council of Cities, linked to
the Ministry of Cities, created a Special
Committee on the Criminalization of
Social Movements.
According to a decree published
Committees against the
Criminalization of Social
Movements have also
been established in several
states, and have created a
national campaign based
on a manifesto signed by
some of the most important
and historic human rights
organizations in Brazil.
Conservative and
progressive forces are
involved in the debate on
the criminalization of social
movements in Brazil, and
its future will define much
of the course of Brazilian
democracy.
in the Official Gazette, the purpose
of the commission is to “prevent the
criminalization of social movements and
organizations” precisely as a result of
initiatives such as PLS 499, which defines
the crime of terrorism.
Committees against the Criminalization
of Social Movements have also been
established in several states, and have
created a national campaign based on a
manifesto signed by some of the most
important and historic human rights
organizations in Brazil, like the Justice
and Peace Commission of São Paulo, the
Santo Dias Human Rights Center of the
Archdiocese of São Paulo, the São Paulo
Archdiocese’s Vicariate of Street People
Pastoral, the group Torture Never AgainSão Paulo and the Committee Against
Genocide of Marginalized Black and Poor
Youth.
Conservative
and
progressive
forces are involved in the debate on the
criminalization of social movements in
Brazil, and its future will define much of
the course of Brazilian democracy. q
43
PERU
Protests against mining project that will affect agriculture in the department of Arequipa.
DEMONIZATION AND
CRIMINALIZATION
Víctor Liza in Lima
Peasants and defenders of
the land suffer harassment
by judicial authorities
thanks to legal tools
developed to favor
economic power.
44
S
ince the beginning of the
present
century,
social
conflicts about mining and
the environment in Peru have
been a constant. Place and protagonists
may change, but the story follows the
same script even during the present
SALVEMOS EL VALLE DE TAMBO
mining company that was widely opposed
by the people of Cajamarca. Protests
continued and police brutally repressed
them leaving five dead. In Espinar, the
inhabitants of this Cusco province, led
by then mayor Oscar Mollohuanca, took
to the streets against the pollution
produced by the Swiss mining company,
Xtrata-Tintaya. There were also deaths by
repression at this site.
The most recent conflict is happening
in the province of Islay, in the southern
province of Arequipa. Since Mar. 23,
the population, mostly peasants, are on
indefinite strike against the Tía María
mining project of Southern Copper
Corporation, financed by Mexican capital,
because it will affect the rivers and the
agriculture and livestock. Confrontations
have resulted in three deaths (two
civilians and one police officer), as
well as hundreds of wounded. In spite
of this, President Humala has opted,
in a recent message to the nation, to
permit the company to “decide” if the
project continues or not. The company
announced later its decision to suspend
the project for sixty days causing more
indignation among the protesters.
The lawyer and human rights activist,
Wilfredo Artdito, told Noticias Aliadas
that this problem “has been getting more
serious in the last 10 or 12 years in which
measures have been taken to neutralize
the opponents of the projects, treating
them as delinquents, but also resulting
in actions against them that can only be
defined as crimes.”
At the end of March, Julio Morriberón
Rosas,
spokesman
for
Southern
CopperCorporation, called the protesters
government of President Ollanta Humala,
who during his electoral campaign of
2011 promised to resolve these conflicts
with dialogue and respect the will of the
communities.
The cases of Conga
in
Cajamarca
and
Espinar in Cusco (2012)
“[The criminalization] has been getting more
reveal that although
serious in the last 10 or 12 years in which
presidents
change,
the reality of deaths
measures have been taken to neutralize the
and wounded persists.
opponents of the projects, treating them as
In the first case, the
government intended delinquents, but also resulting in actions against
to give approval to the
them that can only be defined as crimes.”
Conga mining project
WILFREDO ARDITO
of the Yanacocha
—
45
modifies Article 20 of the
Penal Code declaring as
unpunishable members
Besides the discredit of social protests,
of the Armed Forces
and National Police who
influencing public opinion, the principal
“during the carrying out
leaders of the opposition movements to the of their duties and the
use of their weapons in
extractive projects are blamed for alleged standard procedures”
cause wounds or death
acts of vandalism and denounced before
to any person. In other
words they have carte
judicial authorities.
blanche to wound or kill.
The law also considers
that extortion, understood
“anti-mining terrorists.” The term has
as obtaining economic advantage by threat,
been repeated by the press, various
includes “advantages of another kind,”
opinion leaders and members of parties
in the words of Ardito, such as protests
of the right in Congress, such as Juan
and road blocks, which distorts the term.
Carlos Eguren, of the Popular Christian
Whoever engages in these actions is
Party (PPC), which attempted to link the
sanctioned with sentences between five
opposition to Shining Path, the terrorist
and ten years in prison; if these actions are
group.
done by a group, as is normally the case,
Also, a “discriminatory burden” in the
the sentence can be up to 25 years.
police repression against the protesters
must be added according to Ardito.
“In Lima the demonstrators are beaten
or wounded and no one has died until
In 2007 a majority in
now; but in the interior of the country,
acts of much greater violence that have
Congress approved
resulted in deaths have been occurring,
Legislative Decree 982 that
overwhelmingly in Andean or indigenous
areas. This happens because in Lima
modifies Article 20 of the
repression is not as violent as in other parts
Penal Code declaring as
of the country, he explained, adding that
the media contributes to discrimination
unpunishable members
by branding indigenous people as
manipulated and irresponsible which has
of the Armed Forces
led to peasants being perceived as stupid,
and National Police who
stubborn, ignorant and violent.”
Imposition of the bullet
Besides the discredit of social protests,
influencing public opinion, the principal
leaders of the opposition movements to
the extractive projects are blamed for
alleged acts of vandalism and denounced
before judicial authorities. This is because
Alan Garcia`s second government (20062011) promulgated a series of laws to
criminalize protest. This is the imposition
of the bullet.
In 2007 a majority in Congress
approved Legislative Decree 982 that
46
“during the carrying out of
their duties and the use of
their weapons in standard
procedures” cause wounds
or death to any person. In
other words they have carte
blanche to wound or kill.
Another norm is Law 30151 that
grants impunity to military and In the case of public officials, such as
police personnel in cases of violation
mayors or regional governors, who
of human rights; and Legislative
Decree 1095 that authorizes the
participate in protests, they are not
Armed Forces to intervene in
only subject to prosecution but also
conflicts without the declaration of
barred from holding public office.
a state of emergency.
In the case of public officials, such
as mayors or regional governors,
who participate in protests, they are
of bribery after two audios appeared
not only subject to prosecution but also
in which presumably a lawyer for the
barred from holding public office. In the
Southern Copper Corporation, owner
case of Mollehuanca, Mayor of Espinar,
of the Tía María project, attempts to
he was arrested and imprisoned in a jail
bribe him in exchange for stopping the
located 800 kilometers from Espinar.
protests. Quispe says that this arrest
The District Attorney asked for a 10 year
is strange because if this has been
sentence for the former mayor.
done with someone who presumably is
Besides public officials, numerous
negotiating to stop a protest against a
leaders of social organizations are being
private company, the lawyer should also
charged and possibly facing prison. For
be arrested.”
example, there are 53 people accused of
Gutiérrez was removed from his
the wounding and death of the security
political party, the leftist Tierra y Libertad,
officers during the “Baguazo,” a protest of
because of his suspiciously felonious
Amazon communities in the northeastern
behavior.
city of Bagua on June 9, 2009 against
Popular organizations are not
a series of legislative decrees which
remaining on the sidelines with their
permitted the parceling of indigenous
arms crossed. Ardito pointed out that
land and nature reserves in the Amazon
campaigns to collect signatures are
region into large concessions for mining,
underway in order that these contentious
oil drilling and logging, where 23 police
decrees be declared unconstitutional, as
and 10 civilians were killed, commented
well as denouncing them before the InterJuan José Quispe, a lawyer from the
American Commission on Human Rights.
Institute for Legal Defense (IDL). Quispe
Quispe added that the IDL as well as
said that Santiago Manuin, leader of the
other human rights organizations have
Awajún community, is among them.
stated their concern regarding a decree
“Due to political pressure, people
solicited by the head of the President’s
who had nothing to do with the acts of
Cabinet, Pedro Caterino, in which the
vandalism resulting from the eviction at
Congress would delegate powers to the
the Curva del Diablo are taken on trial,”
Executive Branch for the use of force
questioned Quispe. In addition, Quispe
equally against organized crime and
also questions that the Minister of Interior
persons who protest.
at the time, Mercedes Cabanillas, the
“This decree should be modified
police general in charge of the operation,
because it does not differentiate between
Luis Muguruza and the former director
the types of force used, keeping in mind
of the Police, José Sánchez Farfán, only
that firearms or grenades should not be
appear as witnesses in another legal
used in controlling disturbances during
proceeding.
social protests,” he declared.
In spite of these initiatives, the
Unconstitutional Decrees
situation seems to be in favor of the
In the case of recent protests in Islay,
government — and the extractive
one of the leaders, Pepe Julio Gutiérrez,
industries — thanks to these contentious
has been arrested for the alleged crime
rules and laws. q
47
48