In the coming weeks, Pablo López Alavéz, an activist from a tiny village in southern Mexico, will learn his fate. The decision from a federal court may affect the fate of a part of the forest in the mountains of Oaxaca that he calls home. And some people hope it will also affect the future of land and environment defenders across Mexico.
“If you drive 40 miles inland from Recife you go back in time 150 years.” Those were the words of a human rights defender from the Pastoral Land Commission in Pernambuco, Brazil, as he tried to explain the lawless brutality with which landowners managed their sugar cane plantations. The reach of the state is weak and the level of corruption and abuse of power is high.
Le Guatemala attire une grande variété de visiteurs : des routards, des "éco-touristes", des aficionados du chocolat et du café, et même des fans de Star Wars qui viennent explorer les temples Maya qui apparaisent dans le tout premier film.
Si vous tapez "Livingston, Guatemala" sur Google, vous verrez apparaitre sur votre écran de magnifiques photos de plages immaculées, des rivières, des cascades et une ville colorée où se mélangent les cultures africaines et autochtones, offrant une expérience unique en Amérique centrale.
Santiago Maldonado a disparu alors qu'il manifestait pour le droit à la terre. Pas pour ses propres droits, car il est né dans une famille prospère dans la province de Buenos Aires. Il y a deux ans, le 1er août 2017, il manifestait pour les droits du peuple Mapuche à jouir d'un lopin de terre en Patagonie.
Sitting in Minsk following a few days of meetings with human rights defenders and others in Belarus led me to reflect on where Europe stands with Eastern Europe. Recent criticism of Tánaiste Simon Coveney promoting trade with Russia in spite of sanctions is only one symptom of a broader weakness and lack of strategy at EU level.
Over the past 11 years I’ve led workshops for human rights defenders at risk in Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and East and Central Europe. Many of the HRDs trained at those workshops on Risk Analysis and Protection Planning reported stigmatisation, online abuse, threats and attacks. But earlier this year I received a call for help from a much closer source.
Brutal and corrupt dictatorships trying to use sport to improve their image is nothing new, as TheGuardiannoted in February when it compared club ownership and the Champions League to Mussolini and the 1934 World Cup.
Andrew Anderson recently met with human rights defenders and protesters demanding reform on the streets of Sudan.
“It is a coup, done by the security committee which is NISS, the army, RSF and police. They have suspended the constitution, which means suspending the bill of rights, declared a state of emergency and a curfew. They are going to meet the angry protesters with brutality.”
- Human rights defender, Khartoum 11th April 2018
Andrew Anderson, together with the Front Line Defenders Protection Coordinator for Europe & Central Asia, Masha Chitchenkova, visited Uzbekistan in March 2019.
“The prison wardens used to ask me why I was smiling, was I pleased with my sentence? I asked them if smiling was against prison regulations.”
In October last year, I had the privilege of meeting Damian Gallardo for the first time. It is a name I heard many times since 2013, when he was arrested in the middle of the night in his home in Oaxaca; since then Front Line Defenders – with many others – supported him and his family and campaigned for his release. I met him in what had been his home for five years, a high security prison outside Guadalajara, in the state of Jalisco.
