Human Rights

Honduras, In a span of six hours, peasants and the brother of a Lawyer were murdered

Details: Published on Wednesday, 20 February 2013 02:12

Press release from Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan (MUCA)

(Bajo Aguán, Saturday February 16th ). Among an ongoing militarization, the gunmen operate freely in Bajo Aguán; on Saturday February 16th at 1:30 pm, heavily armed men murdered Santos Jacobo Cartagena (55), while waiting for the bus that would transfer him to Tocoa.

Cartagena was a member of the San Esteban Company that united the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán (MUCA), and was murdered at a bus station in the diversion of community confidence of Sinaloa, led by men who were aboard a car, causing him multiple gunshot wounds in different parts of the body.

But hours later murderers led by land grabbers murdered Jose Trejo Cabrera (55) by several gunshots in the district of San Isidro de Tocoa Colon, who was the brother of the lawyer Antonio Trejo Cabrera, murdered on September 22 near the Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa, and also a member of the Cooperative San Isidro belonging to the Movimiento Autentico Reivindicador Campesino del Aguán (MARCA).

Brazil,landless leader violently murdered in Rio de Janeiro

Details: Published on Thursday, 31 January 2013 11:29

(2013 Radio Mundo Real) Download: MP3

Cícero Guedes, rural worker and activist of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Via Campesina) of Brazil, was murdered by gunmen on Friday, January 25 near the Cambahyba sugar-cane field, in Rio de Janeiro state, while riding his bicycle.

According to the official announcement of his murder in MST’s website, Cicero was a sugarcane worker in Alagoas and was part of the Brava Gente settlement. He was struggling in favor of the agrarian reform as coordinator of the occupation in the Cambahyba sugar cane field, a complex of seven farms covering 3,500 hectares.

The Brazilian government declared this an unproductive estate in July 2012, but in addition its history is linked to the military dictatorship in that country, since the bodies of political prisoners were burned in that field, said leader Marcelo Durao to Real World Radio.

Chile, Cloc-Via Campesina expresses solidarity with Mapuche People

Details: Published on Wednesday, 23 January 2013 08:54

15 de Enero, Radio Mundo Real.

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The repression perpetrated by Sebastian Piñera’s administration in Chile against several Mapuche communities in the region of Araucania has resulted in multiple solidarity actions and expressions at international level. One of them is the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations, CLOC – Via Campesina.

CLOC points out that with the militarization of Mapuche regions in Chile, the criminalization and persecution of this native people deepens, violating human rights and international regulations.

In addition, the “anti-terrorist” law that serves as an excuse for the militarization of Araucania “violates the most basic state of law principles” whose origin dates from over five centuries ago, of which “130 years correspond to the Chilean state”.

Early this month, the fire in a school of the poorest region of Chile resulted in Piñera’s neoliberal administration sending strong contingents of armed forces and the explicit promotion of “security guards” for landowners. Two of these landowners were killed in the fire, but the Mapuche organizations denied having any responsibility, and pointed out that the fire was started by agitators that want to cause the state to be violent with communities.

Honduras, Bajo Aguan, another farmer leader assesinated

Details: Published on Saturday, 24 November 2012 13:22

Last Saturday, November 10TH, 2012, more peasant blood was shed in Bajo Aguan. In the morning José Cecilio Perez Martinez, was found murdered who had been kidnapped the day before in the afternoon by three gunmen in the outpost of Tocoa Trujillo, Colón.

The Cro. Perez Martinez was president of the cooperative El Despertar that belongs to Movimiento Autentico Reivindicador Campesino del Aguán (MARCA), and was found murdered in the village of Tigre at 8:30 am in the car in which he had been kidnapped.

There is no doubt that these armed groups operating in the area supported by local landowners, and in many cases supported by the police and the military that remain in the area, are now turning to new strategies to develop the work of hired killers.

Argentina: Agribusiness as Usual: The Death of Peasant Farming

Details: Published on Monday, 05 November 2012 14:18

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/62260/

On 10th October, Miguel Galván was murdered, stabbed to death in the doorway of his own home. Almost one year earlier, Cristian Ferreyra had been shot and killed in his house. Both men were peasant farmers from the northern province of Santiago del Estero and members of the National Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero – Farmers’ Way (Mocase-VC) an organisation which fights for the land rights of peasants and indigenous people.

^{Protest at Congreso to call for justice against the assasination of Miguel Galvan (Photo courtesy of Mocase-VC)}

The reason for the men’s murders was that they refused to give up their land to multi-national soybean plantation companies. Whilst Galván’s attackers are yet to be identified, in Ferreyra’s case it is widely claimed that a large landowner from the area hired hitmen to remove him from his path.

In the six months after Ferreyra’s tragic death, incidents of conflict between large agribusiness and peasants decreased, but since then, the expansion of soy production has continued and so have the forced evictions of peasants and indigenous people from lands they have occupied for centuries.

Europe must support the rights of peasants - Denouncing the multiple attacks on La Via Campesina members

Details: Published on Wednesday, 17 October 2012 13:10

Press release

(Brussels, 15 October 2012) In September 2012 all European Union governments with a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council voted against a specific protection mechanism for the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. In a single week, several new attacks, threats and assassinations of La Via Campesina representatives have cropped up. It is high time for the EU to recognize the specific vulnerability of peasants and other people working in rural areas as well as the growing aggression directed at them.

Everywhere in the world, men and women peasants and smallholder farmers who struggle to maintain their communities and hang onto their land find themselves the victims of repression and criminalization at the hand of ruling elites and economic interests.

Rafael Alegría, a Honduran peasant and member of the International Coordination Committee of La Via Campesina, was informed by the Honduran security minister that an attack on him was being organized. The seriousness of these threats is highlighted by the assassinations of Manuel Eduardo Díaz Mazariegos, the human rights public prosecutor, on 24 September 2012, and of Antonio Trejo, a lawyer defending several farming communities, on September 2012.

La Via Campesina condemns the murder of landless activist Abdul Karim in Bangladesh

Details: Published on Thursday, 11 October 2012 13:34

La Via Campesina strongly denounces the murder of Abdul Karim, a leader of the Bangladesh Krishok Federation (Bangladesh Peasants Federation) who was brutally killed by a man named Addur Rahim. The killer was patronized by local elite and powerful groups who had vested interest in a stretch of abandoned railway land that had been occupied by hundreds of landless men and women in 2004. Karim bhai as he was lovingly called, had led this movement of landless peasants to occupy this land to farm and live in dignity. Karim bhai was 63 years old.

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