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Innocent: Judge closes criminalization case against three fishermen and a community journalist
By Paolina Albani, January 31, 2024
https://prensacomunitaria.org/2024/01/inocentes-juez-cierra-el-caso-de-criminalizacion-de-tres-pescadores-y-un-periodista-comunitario/
The intermediate stage hearing was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, January 31, in which the Criminal Court of Puerto Barrios, Izabal, would decide whether the accused would be released or sent to trial for the crimes of illegal detention, threats, instigation to commit a crime and illicit association.
The hearing began an hour later. With almost two hours of delay. While waiting outside the courtroom, the three fishermen and the Mayan Q'eqchi' community journalist from El Estor, Carlos Choc, talked with their lawyers and feared that the hearing, once again, would be suspended due to the absence of the lawyer for Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel (CGN), [a subsidiary of the Swiss company Solway Investment Group].
However, after the wait, the hearing began. There, Judge Aníbal Arteaga not only accepted the request made by the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP) to annul the charges for lack of evidence, but also stopped the coercive measures imposed against the accused, who were linked to process in January 2019, and then obtained substitutive measures that obliged them to go to the MP headquarters in El Estor every 30 days to sign a book of minutes.
Upon leaving the hearing, they celebrated the closure of the case, but also a period in which criminalization has prevented them from living normally, and even, in which they have been excluded from the community for opposing the mine.
"Today, a process in which we have been suffering at the hands of the company has come to an end. We closed a story in which we were beaten by the persecution and criminalization we have received for 7 years. It is a historic day," said Cristóbal Pop, president of the Artisanal Fishermen's Union (GPA), who was accompanied by other members who were criminalized at the beginning of the process, such as Eduardo Suram.
"I was needing to have that freedom. It was exhausting for me and my family... I think an important role was played by the people who were bought by the company and by those who declared me non grata, but it was important to defend the resources of the beautiful lake of Izabal," Pop added.
"The MP established that the members of the guild - of artisanal fishermen - were defending Lake Izabal from the ravages of the mining company and established that it is an internationally recognized exercise, for which they could not be prosecuted.
This is a clear precedent for the defense of rights and in the case of the journalist Choc, who was doing journalistic coverage at the time of the events falsely accused by the mining company at the time. Now, his innocence is maintained", said Rafael Maldonado, lawyer for the fishermen of El Estor, Izabal.
Journalist Choc said that this day was important not only because of the access to justice, which allowed the case against him to be closed, but also because of the recognition given to the fishermen in the defense of Lake Izabal.
"It took more than seven years for a sentence to be handed down," was the immediate reaction of Héctor Reyes, Choc's lawyer on behalf of the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH). "The request made four years ago by the Public Prosecutor's Office was accepted, in the sense that there was no crime to prosecute them, but that it had not been done due to several absences of the company's lawyer. Today, the dismissal of the case and the measures against Carlos and his fellow fishermen are lifted. Now, he can exercise his informative work and his right to denounce what is happening in El Estor, as well as in other places in Guatemala".
The fishermen and the journalist hugged their lawyers as they left the Criminal Court of Puerto Barrios, after the judge's decision to release them.
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