There was “a clear intention to exterminate”

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Ixil Genocide Trial: There was “a clear intention to exterminate”
Rights Action Newsletter - July 2024
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An extraordinary trial is taking place in Guatemalan courts ([link removed]) , to hold former Guatemalan Army Chief of Staff Manuel Benedicto Lucas García accountable for the crime of genocide. The trial is receiving little to no media coverage in the US, Canada and Western Europe, likely because the genocides in Guatemala were supported and enabled by the US (primarily) and to a lesser extent by Western Europe (Britain and France, notably) and Canada.

Plaintiffs in Hudbay Minerals lawsuits face on-going health, hunger and climate crisis harms
Over the course of these landmark lawsuits, filed in 2010, the 13 Maya Q’eqchi’ plaintiffs – whose well-being was deeply compromised by the violence alleged in the lawsuits – have suffered compounding harms due to worsening annual droughts (preventing them from growing their subsistence food crops) and ever more regular hurricanes and tropical storms (that wipe out their crops). Today, the plaintiffs and their families experience increased hunger and malnutrition ([link removed]) in their mining-impacted region due to the longest and hottest “dry season” in recent history ([link removed]) , leaving recently planted crops dead in the ground, delaying the planting of crops needed to help them through next year’s dry season.

Rights Action continues to work closely with the lawyers in Canada, to fund and support legal work in Guatemala to resolve issues relevant to the lawsuits in Canada, and to send regular small funds to the plaintiffs to respond to their health and subsistence needs, as they press on in pursuit of justice and reparations in Canadian courts.

DEFENSORA (2013, 40 Mins) provides the historical and cultural context of decades of Maya Q’eqchi’ land, rights and environmental defense struggles against the harms and violence of Canadian nickel mining operations. View: [link removed]

TESTIMONIO human rights delegation to Guatemala
Rights Action led a delegation from May 4-12, 2024 ([link removed]) to learn firsthand about ongoing community struggles in resistance to harms, violence and corruption of global mining companies. It was made brutally clear to our group that, notwithstanding the country’s worst heat and dry spell in recent history, the mining industry is pushing as hard as ever to re-initiate operations. TESTIMONIO: Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala ([link removed]) remains as on point today as when it was published in October 2021.

GOLD FEVER (2013, 83 Mins) provides a moving look at the reality of what happens when the gold mining giant Goldcorp Inc. (now owned by Newmont Corporation) dug into the homes, communities and lands of the remote Mayan Mam village of San Miguel Ixtahuacan. Importantly, Gold Fever provides the historical and political context to the new wave of global (mainly Canadian) mining that began in Guatemala in the early 2000, in the aftermath of the US-backed genocides of the 1970s, early 80s. View: [link removed]

“You can’t say the mining companies are responsible for the Ríos Montt slaughter [in Guatemala] but they are benefiting from the structures that were left in place after those many years of savagery and violence and repression.”
Noam Chomsky, Gold Fever

Canadian tourist operators in Honduras charged with money laundering and fraud related to sales of lands that belong to Indigenous Garifuna communities
In Honduras, three Canadian citizens (Randy “porn king” Jorgensen, Malik Zoharan and Darren Wade) have been charged ([link removed]) with money laundering and fraud related to sales to other Canadian tourist investors of lands violently and corruptly taken from the Garifuna people over many years. As it turns out, the “porn king” and associates were allegedly frauding other foreign investors who had been all too happy to buy a “piece of paradise” in Honduras during the 13 years of the US and Canadian-backed drug-trafficking regime in power.

Former US and Canadian-backed President of Honduras sentenced to 45 years in jail
On June 26, former President Juan Orlando Hernandez was sentenced by a New York City court to 45 years in jail ([link removed]) on charges of operating a drug-trafficking cartel during the entire time he was in office, propped up as a “democratic allie” by the US and Canada. It is impossible to overstate the complicity of the US and Canada in supporting and legitimizing the repressive, “open for global business”, drug-trafficking regime for 13 years. It is hard to overstate how much damage and violence this regime did to the institutions of the State, people and environment of Honduras.

‘Putting the U.S. and Canada on Trial’ campaign
Rights Action urges folks to follow the work of the Honduras Solidarity Network trying to hold the US and Canada accountable for these 13 years of support for and legitimization of the repressive drug-trafficking regime in Honduras. (X: @Hondurassol ([link removed]) @HondurasNow ([link removed]) |Inst: @HondurasNow ([link removed]) | Web: Bit.ly/NarcoTrialCampaign ([link removed]) | [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

Denouncing and challenging the Monroe Doctrine and imperialism of the US and the West, past and present
Rights Action recommends this two-part article by James Phillips ([link removed]) that explains the historic and contemporary context in which we fund and support human rights and land rights, justice and environmental defense work in Guatemala and Honduras. The article reminds us that the issues being addressed in any one country – say Honduras or Guatemala – are not and never were “national” issues. They have always been, and are today, local-to-national-to-global issues. Any understanding and work to address and remedy the issues must therefore be local-to-national-to-global.

Podcast Series: Under the Shadow
Rights Action recommends the Under The Shadow podcast series ([link removed]) by Michael Fox, in co-production with NACLA and The Real News Network.

“No country in Latin America has remained free from the shadow hanging over them.
The shadow of the United States. The shadow of the Monroe Doctrine.”

Don’t turn away from Palestine: Denouncing US, Canadian, EU-backed genocide in Palestine
* British Scientific Journal The Lancet (July 5, 2024) ([link removed](24)01169-3/fulltext) estimates Palestinian death toll could be greater than 186,000
* ‘The Night Won’t End’: Biden’s War on Gaza, New film (1 hour, 18 minutes) by Fault Lines
* Genocide Trial in Guatemala Brings Memories of Israel’s Role in the Killings, Mary Jo McConahy (Progressive Magazine, May 10, 2024 ([link removed]) ) connects role of Israel, as allie of the US, in support of the Guatemalan regimes during the worst years of genocide.

Supporting genocide as foreign policy from Guatemala to Palestine
Rights Action recalls the US and Western-backed genocides and scorched earth massacres in Guatemala in the late 1970s, early 1980s. As the US-led West provided pretty much unconditional military and political support for the atrocities, the western media invisibilized the vast majority of the death and destruction.

In our work related to foreign interventions, human rights violations, corruption and impunity in Honduras and Guatemala, Rights Action documents and denounces how the US and Canadian governments and militaries, our companies and banks, and entities like the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank, oftentimes enable, cause and benefit from all of the above. We understand things no differently in the case of US and Canada’s military, economic and political support for and legitimization of what Israel is doing in Palestine since October 7, 2023, and going back to Nakba in 1948.

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“If you are not careful, the press will have you hating the people being repressed
and loving the people doing the repressing.”
Malcolm X
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Your funds at work
As of July 1, 2024, Rights Action has sent over $135,000 of your donations and grants to our partner groups to respond to their emergency relief needs and community struggles in defense of democracy, human rights, justice, land, territory and the environment. (Where your donations go ([link removed]) )

On request, Rights Action can answer questions about issues addressed in this newsletter and provide more information about the particular groups and struggles we fund and support.

Thank-you

Grahame Russell, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Camila Rich, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn

Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)
To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2

Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

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