by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 15, 2012 | Repression at Home
By Rights Action
On June 13, assassins on a motorcycle shot multiple times at Yolanda Oqueli Veliz, a community leader from the municipalities of San José el Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc, just outside of Guatemala City.
Yolanda is in critical but stable condition in a Guatemala City Hospital, one bullet still lodged in her body.
Humanitarian-emergency relief funds are needed – see below, to make tax-deductible donations in the USA and Canada.
There is little doubt in people’s minds in San José el Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc that the attempt on her life was carried out by assassins and that she was targeted due to the articulate and passionate community leadership role she has assumed in opposing the illegal and unwanted entry of Radius Gold into their community lands.
On Saturday, May 26, a Rights Action/University of Northern British Colombia delegation traveled to Yolanda’s home community and met with hundreds of community members peacefully resisting the entry of Radius Gold Inc.
Add Radius Gold Inc. now to the Canadian “Mining and Repression” Hall of Fame, to the growing list of Canadian mining companies directly and indirectly linked to extreme repression around the world. In the countries where Rights Action work (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador), this list of repression, over the past few years alone, includes: Radius Gold, Goldcorp Inc (attempted assassination – shooting in the eye – of Diodora Hernandez / beatings and attacks on community leaders), Hudbay Minerals/Skye Resources (murder, shooting-wounding of numerous villagers, gang rapes of 11 women villagers), Pacific Rim (murder of 5 villagers). The lists goes on …
Read more from Rights Action: http://rightsaction.org/action-content/assassination-attempt-guatemala-linked-mining-interests-radius-gold-inc-canada
Rights Action has already been sending general support funds to the communities of San Jose del Golfo and San Pedro Ayumpac that are working for integral community development and the environment. Make check payable to “Rights Action” and mail to:
UNITED STATES: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
CANADA: 552 – 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/tax-deductible-donations
DONATIONS OF STOCK: info@rightsaction.org
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 14, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Direct Action, Repression at Home
By Shiv Malik / The Guardian
A veteran anti-whaling campaigner has been arrested in Germany on charges relating to an incident in 2002 when the boat he was piloting attempted to stop poachers illegally killing sharks.
The environmental activist organisation Sea Shepherd said Paul Watson had been detained at Frankfurt airport to answer a Costa Rican extradition warrant for “violating ships traffic”.
The incident took place in Guatemalan waters a decade ago when Watson’s boat, the Farley Mowat, encountered an illegal shark-finning operation run by a Costa Rican ship, the Varadero. Crew on the Varadero accused Watson of attempting to ram their boat and Watson was charged by Costa Rican authorities with attempted murder.
Watson’s charges were subsequently dismissed when a video of the incident filmed by a documentary crew was shown to the Costa Rican prosecutor. However, the charges were later re-investigated by a newly appointed prosecutor.
Established by Watson in Malibu, California, Sea Shepherd – which has had a number of celebrity backers such as Pierce Brosnan and Martin Sheen – has been involved in numerous anti-whaling and environmental protection actions in international waters.
In 2006 Watson was involved in a “daunting chase” when his boat for weeks pursued a Japanese whaling fleet over 4,000 miles along the Antarctic coastline.
Sea Shepherd said: “Captain Paul Watson was arrested on 12 May and has made contact from Frankfurt airport jail. He has been given periodic access to his mobile phone and is being treated well.
“A fisherman accused Paul of trying to kill him, although it is evident that Paul did not and that evidence is on film. He said the warrant dates back to an event in 2002.”
The statement added that Watson was scheduled to appear before a judge on Tuesday morning, and that it was unclear why the warrant had been re-issued.
Sea Shepherd said Watson was being assisted by Daniel Cohn Bendit, co-president of the Greens/Free European Alliance group in the European parliament, and José Bové, a group member.
“With Costa Rica’s rich biodiversity, it would be a travesty for them not to stand up for sharks, which sit at the highest levels of the food chain assuring balance among ecological communities in the ocean,” Sea Shepherd said.
“Paul is very touched by the concern on Facebook and Twitter and finds it very encouraging.”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/14/paul-watson-arrested-germany-sea-shepherd
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 2, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Danilo Valladares
“We want land where we can live and grow food to feed ourselves,” said Pedro Ichich, one of several thousand indigenous farmers who marched to the Guatemalan capital to demand solutions to the ageold conflict over land.
The government of right-wing President Otto Pérez Molina met with representatives of the demonstrators this week, and they are now waiting to see what will happen.
Ichich, his wife and five children jointed the protesters on the 214-km march that started out on Mar. 19 from Cobán, in the northern province of Alta Verapaz, and reached Guatemala City eight days later, where they gathered outside the seat of government.
“We want to be where we used to live, where the blood of our compañeros was shed,” said Ichich, whose family was among the campesinos or peasant farmers who were violently evicted by police and soldiers on Mar. 15, 2011 from land in Polochic valley in Alta Verapaz, which sugarcane growers claim as their own.
Three campesinos were killed during the forced eviction of some 3,000 Q’eqchi Maya Indians.
“They left us in the street, with just the clothes on our back,” Ichich told IPS. “The police, the military and the sugar company’s private security destroyed our crops. Since then we haven’t had any work, and we have to ask people to let us spend the night on their property. So we are asking the government to do something.”
Chanting slogans like “water and land can’t be sold” and “No to evictions”, around 5,000 native campesinos from different parts of the country reached the Plaza de la Constitución in the centre of the capital on Tuesday Mar. 27.
The meeting between a delegation of protesters and Pérez Molina stretched from Tuesday evening into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
“The ball is in their court,” Daniel Pascual, a leader of the Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC – Committee for Campesino Unity), the small farmers’ association that organised the march, told IPS. “The agrarian issue and hunger have become a focus of national debate in these nine days. I don’t think the president can ignore this problem.”
Pascual said the protesters presented Pérez Molina with a list of more than 50 demands with regard to the land problem. But they agreed to put a priority on eight issues.
These urgent questions include the demand for a subsidy equivalent to 39 million dollars to help campesinos pay their debts on land; land for the displaced communities in Polochic valley; a moratorium on mining activity; and the removal of military bases from areas experiencing social conflicts, he said.
“It’s not that we’re giving up on the rest of the issues, it’s just that this is the first set of questions that we are putting a priority on, to facilitate a response by the government,” Pascual said.
Other demands are a halt to evictions from rural property and the cancellation of operating permits for hydroelectric plants.
Read more from Inter Press Service: https://web.archive.org/web/20120603000051/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=107265
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 15, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, NEWS
By Danilo Valladares, Inter-Press Service
“No one will pay for the damages when work at the mine has finished,” says María del Rosario Velásquez, who lives in a town near the Oasis mine 100 km southeast of the Guatemalan capital.
The Canada-based Tahoe Resources company plans to extract gold, silver, zinc and lead from the mine.
Velásquez is not so sure that the mine will bring benefits to her hometown, San Rafael Las Flores. But she is sure of the risks that it poses to the environment.
“We know it will cause a great deal of pollution, which is why we are opposed to this project. The only one here benefiting from this is the mayor,” she told IPS.
Anti-mining sentiments flared up again in Guatemala after the new right-wing president, retired General Otto Pérez Molina, signed a “voluntary agreement” on Jan. 27 with the extractive industries business association, to increase royalties paid by the companies. The deal will be in effect until an amended mining law is passed by Congress.
In the accord, which is non-binding, the industry agreed to increase royalties from one to five percent for gold mining, from one to four percent for silver, and from one to three percent for metals like nickel, lead and zinc.
But the royalties paid by quarries extracting lime, cement, marble and stone – which also cause environmental problems in this impoverished Central American country – will remain unchanged at one percent.
Pérez Molina says the increase in royalties, which according to the government’s estimates will rise from 53 million dollars a year to between 80 and 93 million dollars, is a major achievement.
However, not only is the increase voluntary, but the agreement states that it will not be applied if international prices drop below 975 dollars per ounce for gold (the current price is 1,730 dollars) or below 16 dollars per ounce for silver (now at 33.70 dollars).
Environmentalists, universities and local communities opposed the agreement, arguing that the debate on the activities of the mining industry must go beyond the issue of royalties and take into account questions such as natural resources, the environment, the development of local communities, and what real benefits the industry brings to the Guatemala.
Velásquez says her community will see no benefits from the rise in royalties to be paid by the mining industry, which on the other hand “will definitely cause us harm.”
Read more from IPS News: https://web.archive.org/web/20120420002612/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=106766
Photo by Jeison Higuita on Unsplash
