by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 6, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Maria Sanchez / Upside Down World
Tucked between sand dunes and the Pacific Ocean, perched on a small hill, is Xayakalan, home to members of the indigenous community, Santa Maria Ostula. Here, the sound of waves hitting the shore mixes with the cries of children playing among the wooden huts. Against this beautiful backdrop, a group of Mexican Nahua people are fighting to keep control of their land. The cost has been high.
Since 2009, this small community of around 3, 000 people has seen 28 of its members killed. Another four are missing. Those who dare step up to defend their indigenous rights are picked off one by one.
The Nahua people live on over 24,000 hectors of land, which they use for fishing and growing crops. They speak passionately of how the earth provides for them. Maria, not her real name, describes how she feeds her family from crops she grows outside her house. “Food is easy to come by here,” she states. “And the ocean always gives us a good meal.”
Maria and her community, unlike other groups of indigenous people, have maintained unbroken control of their land since before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century. The community, in the past, has been successful in keeping invaders at bay. This time, they fear they will not be so successful.
Plans by local government to develop the coastline for tourism have stirred up old rivalries in the area. A land dispute going back to the early 1900s has once again reared its head. And this time, the stakes are high. Around 1,300 hectors of unspoilt land running from the coast up into the mountains is being targeted for development.
The Nahua people say that their community owns the rights to the land and have the legal papers to prove it. This claim is disputed by a group of local businessmen, who say the land was privatized in 1911 and that it belongs to them.
To stake claim to this uninhabited stretch of coastline, local businessmen from the nearby town, La Placita, moved onto the land in early June 2009. One man in his fifties, who declined to give his name, explained how the businessmen started giving away plots of land to those willing to join them in the fight against the Ostulan community. “They started building houses,” he stated. “They planted crops. Just like the local politicians they wanted to develop the land for tourism.”
People from Ostula asked local government to intervene on their behalf. Their appeals were ignored. Some in the Nahua community believe that local government is involved. “The government was in agreement with those on the land,” states one woman. Others nod in agreement, but are reluctant to say so out loud.
Towards the middle of June 2009, the community, tired of standing by while others occupied their land, decided to take action. The Nahua called a regional indigenous meeting, which was attended by neighboring indigenous communities. “At the assembly it was decided that we would fight for what is ours,” said Juan, not his real name. Juan explained how around 60 members of Ostula took back the 1,300 hectors that had been taken from them. “They greeted us with gun shots,” he said. “But through sheer number of people we managed to overcome them and drive them out.”
To protect the stretch of beach from further development, around 40 Nahua families set up home in the dunes. What started out as a strong movement in defense of their land has dwindled significantly today, with less than 15 families remaining. People are reluctant to explain why this has happened. And considering the daily threat of violence this is not surprising.
In October of last year, Pedro Leiva Dominguez, spokesperson for the community and member of the Mexican peace movement, was shot dead in Xayakalan. Nobody there is prepared to talk about his murder and who was involved.
“It was a family problem,” a man in his late fifties said.
“It was over an argument,” said one woman.
Pedro was not the first to lose his life defending his community and he would not be the last.
Since driving the local businessmen from the land, the community of Ostula has been constantly under threat of attack by the local drug cartel. This situation is further complicated by the presence of paramilitary groups operating in the area alongside organized crime.
The community is isolated and increasing vulnerable. Those who step up to protect the community do so at their own risk. Many of those who have been killed or kidnapped were the pillar stones of the Ostulan community, without them, the others fear that their movement will fail.
Just before Christmas, the community lost one more member. Don Trino, head of the community police, was abducted while traveling with members of the Mexican Peace Movement, headed by Javier Sicilia. His body was found the next day. He had been shot at point blank range and his body showed signs of torture. Those who knew him talk of his dedication to the cause. Those who remain seem determined to stay, however it is yet to be seen if dedication alone will save them.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3563-dying-in-defense-of-land-in-mexico
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 4, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Defensive Violence, Indigenous Autonomy, Property & Material Destruction
By Ahni / Intercontinental Cry
Two people have died and three others are injured following a confrontation between indigenous peoples and loggers of an endangered tree in Panama.
The conflict began began on March 30, when a group of Wounaan attempted to burn logging equipment that was being used by a group of loggers working for Maderera company to cut Cocobolo timber, a type of rosewood that’s prized around the world.
The endangered hardwood is often used to make gun grips, knife handles, police batons, high-end billiard cues, marine equipment, chess pieces and various musical instruments (marimbas, clarinets, xylophones, acoustic guitars). It is also sought after in China for use in furniture.
Details of the attack are still limited, but according to recent testimony, one of the loggers began firing a weapon at the Wounaan leader Aquilino Opúa was gravely injured during the attack.
The injured leader, it was said, walked through the mountains for at least an hour before making it back to his community, where he soon passed on. The enraged community quickly mobilized to confront the loggers. Upon their arrival, a second melee followed, which resulted in the death of Ezequiel Batista, one of the tractor drivers.
At least three other Wounaan were injured during the two confrontations.
Prior to these events, Wounaan leaders had issued a statement and ultimatum, giving the Panamanian government until April 19 to issue collective titles to their lands as guaranteed by Law 72 of 2008. They also demanded the complete removal of all settlers in the Chiman zone (who had already clashed with the Wounaan on two other occasions this year) and the end of all indiscriminate logging in the area.
“We demand the government to remove the settlers of our land and take responsibility for what happens, because we are willing to defend our land with blood,” said Edilberto Dogirama, president of the Embera-Wounaan General Congress.
Panama’s National Environmental Authority (ANAM) had then suspended all logging permits for two weeks to avoid any conflicts in the region. It had also ordered an eviction of all persons involved in the timber industry.
At least one logging group–that is, company–did not comply with the official order.
Javier Tejeira, Deputy Minister of Government, yesterday said that Police carried out a weekend raid to evict the remaining loggers.
An inquiry into these events is currently ongoing. So far, no arrests have been made.
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/panama-wounaan-attacked-by-loggers-for-defending-endangered-cocobolo-trees/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 3, 2012 | Obstruction & Occupation, Repression at Home
By Tania Branigan / The Guardian
Rural residents protesting against land grabs have clashed with police in north and south-west China, according to accounts posted online, in the latest cases to be sparked by one of the country’s most potent sources of unrest.
Villagers in south-western Yunnan province were arrested and injured when police broke up a a three-day blockade of a highway over the death of a rubber farmer who complained her land had been illegally seized, according to an account posted by an unknown user.
An officer at the Xishuangbanna police station confirmed that officers had dispersed farmers whose protest had blocked the road for several days last week, but said he did not know if there had been arrests and denied that anyone had been beaten.
The local government could not be reached on Tuesday, a public holiday in China.
Land grabs are the primary source of rural unrest in China. Earlier this year the international land rights organisation Landesa, which surveys Chinese farmers annually, warned: “The pace of land takings continues to accelerate, often leaving farmers poorly compensated and embittered.”
According to the online account, rubber farmer Li Xuelan committed suicide on 24 March over the land grab.
The following day her relatives and colleagues held a memorial in the road, resulting in tailbacks up to 3.7 miles (6km) long. The account said numbers swelled into the thousands. But two days later, around 300 riot and special police forcibly dispersed them, injuring and arresting several people, it said.
Photographs posted with the account showed large numbers of police and villagers, with one showing an officer carrying a woman away.
Separately, an overseas rights group said police had detained 22 ethnic Mongolians after hundreds of them protested against the seizure of land in the northern region of Inner Mongolia.
Although the area has generally been seen as peaceful, last year saw the biggest wave of unrest for two decades after the death of a herder who had tried to stop a convoy of coal trucks.
There has been growing tension over damage to grazing land. More than 80 police used “brutal force” on Monday to break up a demonstration of Mongolians from Tulee village near Tongliao city, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said.
In a statement emailed to Reuters it said five protesters were seriously injured after trying to block a bulldozer from a state-backed forestry company from working on their farmland.
“Police violently beat up the protesters with batons. Some were bleeding, some were beaten down on the ground. Women were pulled by their hair and thrown into police vehicles,” the group said, citing a protester.
They were reportedly seeking the return of about 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land which they said the forestry company had stopped managing.
Police in the region said they were unaware of any protest, and a man who answered the phone at the Tongliao public security bureau said offices were closed.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/chinese-police-land-grab-protests
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 | Mar 30, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Male Violence, Rape Culture
By Shadrack Kavilu / Gáldu
Women from minority and indigenous communities are targeted for sexual violence, torture and killings specifically because of their ethnic, religious or indigenous identity, says a report by Minority Rights Group International (MRG).
The report launched recently during the International Women’s Day says that minority and Indigenous women are most vulnerable to sexual and other forms of violence or social injustices compared to other women.
The report notes that discrimination against minorities and indigenous peoples worldwide is often experienced by women as physical violence.
Carl Soderbergh, MRG’s director of policy and communications notes that in war and in peacetime, minority and indigenous women are singled out for sexual violence because they are less protected and less able to complain.
In its most recent state of the world’s minorities and indigenous peoples, MRG documented cases from across the world showing how women from minority and indigenous communities often face disproportionately higher levels of violence and are targeted for attack in situations of conflict and in times of peace.
The impact of conflict on women, the report says is wide-ranging and that women are often the most likely to stay back and protect their families thus making them vulnerable to sexual violence.
In most cases, the report adds that women find themselves heading their households and struggling to find an income. They risk being coerced into sex work or having to offer sexual favours to be able to support their families.
It further notes that if displaced, women are at risk of being exploited by border guards and human traffickers.
Beyond these risks facing women in conflict, the report says women from minority and indigenous communities are specifically targeted for attack by both state forces and armed opposition groups.
These groups of women can face sexual and gender-based violence as a means of punishing their communities.
The report attributes the vulnerability of these women to poverty and marginalization.
“These women often come from poor socio-economic backgrounds and live in remote areas and they have little access to justice and in many cases face discrimination from the police and the judicial system because of their minority status and because of their gender,” adds the report.
Like other women, minority and indigenous women also face violence from within their own communities or their own families. Poverty and social and economic marginalization are some of the factors that contribute to the incidence of domestic violence within minority and indigenous communities.
Soderbergh, MRG’s director of Policy and Communications says while risking multiple abuses in many countries the struggle to stamp out sexual violence against indigenous and minorities is being led by minority women activists themselves, sometimes at serious risk to their own safety.
He however observed that though the International Women’s Day has helped highlight the scourge of violence against women around the world, development agencies, governments and human rights activists need to realise that not all women face the same obstacles, and that violence against women often has a particular ethnic or religious dimension.
According to another report titled Kenya at 50 which was launched by the same international human rights body, the rights of indigenous people continue to be violated despite enactment of laws protecting their right to identity and recognition.
The report which reviews the current status of minority and indigenous groups in Kenya particularly how legal and policy changes over the last five years have responded to the social, economic and political challenges notes that indigenous and minority groups are yet to realise their rights.
The report shows that on the 50th anniversary of Kenya’s independence, many minority and indigenous communities feel that despite some constitutional gains, increased ethnicity of politics has deepened their exclusion, making their situation worse today than it was in 2005.
“Despite the adoption of the new Constitution in 2010, very little has changed in the way the Kenyan state approaches the question of minorities and indigenous people,’ says Marusca Perazzi, MRG’s Governance Programme Coordinator.
During this period, Perazzi says forced evictions and other forms of harassment have continued to plague many minority and indigenous communities in absolute disregard of the new constitution.
Many minority and indigenous groups interviewed separately and in groups, feel issues affecting them, such as drought and state-induced landlessness to pave the way for industrialization, are not receiving enough media attention.
The report highlights that charges of trespass in the Rift Valley against pastoralist groups in Samburu and Naivasha have increased whenever the communities seek access to grazing grounds, even in what are considered community lands.
Daniel Kobei, executive director of Ogiek People’s Development Programme (OPDP), a local organization that advocates for the rights of the indigenous Ogiek people said the laws being considered for adoption by the National Assembly have betrayed a total lack of commitment to ensuring that indigenous and minorities are a functioning part of the new Kenya.
Kobei said the weak laws create fears among minority and indigenous communities that their recognition may not translate into real positive legislative and administrative developments.
For many years, Kobei says the Ogiek have suffered displacement or been threatened with eviction from their ancestral lands, in particular the Mau Forest and around Mount Elgon.
The report also highlights the plight of the Nubians in Kibera, an expansive human settlement known internationally for its poor sanitation and cramped living quarters. The community faces periodic violence pitting them against harsh landlords from majority communities, forced demolitions, evictions and an unclear citizenship status in Kenya.
To further show how minorities suffer unfair disadvantage in law and in practice, the government of Kenya has been reluctant to restore ownership to the Endorois people of their ancestral lands around the Lake Bogoria National Reserve, as recommended by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights two years ago.
The report calls on the Kenyan government to embrace pluralism and take special measures in support of minority and indigenous communities.
From Gáldu
