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CONTENT03 CRIMINALIZATION OF SOCIAL PROTEST, A REGIONAL POLITICAL STRATEGY

ECUADOR: SILENCE, FEAR AND COERCIONLuis Ángel Saavedra

CHILE: REPRESSION AGAINST THE “INTERNAL ENEMY”Arnaldo Pérez Guerra

GUATEMALA: CRIMINALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS PROTEST INTENSIFIESLouisa Reynolds

BOLIVIA: SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN THE TIMES OF THE PLURINATIONAL STATEFernando Valdivia Antisolis

MEXICO: IMPRISONED, DISAPPEARED AND MURDERED ACTIVISTSAlberto Buitre

INTERNATIONAL MECHANISMS TO PROTECT RIGHTS WHEN THEY ARE VIOLATED

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: “HERE PROTESTS ARE NOT CRIMINALIZED; HERE PROTESTERS ARE KILLED OR HURT”Gabriela Read

ARGENTINA: CRIMINALIZATION OF PROTESTS SPREADS TO THE PERIPHERYHernán Scandizzo

PARAGUAY: GOVERNMENT FREE TO REPRESSGustavo Torres y Paulo López

HONDURAS: PEASANTS VICTIMS OF CRIMINALIZATIONJennifer Ávila

BRAZIL: HARSH POLICE REPRESSION AGAINST SOCIAL MOVEMENTS José Pedro Martins

PERU: DEMONIZATION AND CRIMINALIZATIONVíctor Liza

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Latinamerica Press – Special report Criminalization of social protesta.

This special report is produced by COMUNICACIONES ALIADAS, a Perubased non gobernmental organization that since 1964 has been producing independent and reliable information and analysis. Our objective is contribute in advocacy processes aimed to the assertion of rights and the construction of public policies.

Comunicaciones AliadasCalle Comandante Gustavo Jiménez480, Lima 17, Perú.

Telf.: (511) 4603025 / 4605517www.comunicacionesaliadas.com

Also available in spanish:www.noticiasaliadas.org

Published thanks to support from: American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

Director and managing editor:Elsa Chanduví Jaña

Editor: Cecilia Remón ArnaizTranslation: Dana LitovskyStephanie LarsenStefan Sprinckmöller Victoria MacchiWilliam Chico ColugnaDesign and layout:Graciela Ramirez Ramirez

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In all of Latin America, social protest, as well as organizations and social leaders, are criminalized by governments — both neo-liberal and progressive —, in order to silence

their voices of dissent, delegitimize their struggle, immobilize popular organizations and intimidate all those individuals who practice their legitimate right to organize, freely express their opinion, and demand respect for their rights.

The methods to criminalize social organizations and their leaders are numerous: arbitrary detention, preventive imprisonment subject to excessive prolongation, criminal prosecutions, false or unfounded criminal charges, no respect towards the due process of law, disproportionate sanctions, persecution, hostility and physical aggression, direct state repression, murdering of protesters and advocates, forced disappearances, and the questioning of rights such as the right to strike and popular mobilization.

Governments increasingly draw upon laws — they enact new ones or modify existing ones in order to guarantee impunity towards police and armed forces in terms of the use of excessive force; they enforce anti-terrorist laws towards indigenous leaders — in order to criminalize the right to social protest. Criminalization policies look at massive media as a key mechanism and apparatus that makes social protest seen as if it was a crime, and those who advocate it as criminals, often coming to defaming them.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in its Second report on the situation of human rights defenders in the Americas, of 2011, notes that “public protest is one of the usual ways of exercising the right of assembly and the right to freedom of expression, and that it has an essential social interest in guaranteeing the proper functioning of

CRIMINALIZATION OF SOCIAL PROTEST, A REGIONAL POLITICAL STRATEGY

the democratic system. Thus, expressions against the government’s proposed laws or policies, far from being an incitement to violence, are an integral part of any pluralistic democracy.”

“In view of the importance of social protest in a democratic system, the IACHR reiterates that the State has a limited framework to justify any restriction in this regard; while the right to assembly is not absolute and may be subject to certain restrictions, these restrictions must be reasonable in order to ensure that the demonstrations are peaceful, and must be ‘informed by the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality,’” adds the IACHR.

If it is about crimes, many of the strategies utilized by the states — to repress and criminalize social protest — borders on delinquency by jeopardizing the life and integrity of those who take to the streets to protest, block highways or occupy ancestral indigenous lands, which are ways to voice their disagreement, for example, with an extractive activity or a megaproject, since they had not been heard or consulted and, in that case, feeling that their demands are not adequately addressed.

Social protest is a demonstration of the rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression coming from those who promote the defense and protection of civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, and the collective rights of indigenous populations, multiple rights that are expressly recognized under the diverse Inter-American legal instruments that states have signed and agreed to.

Given the seriousness of this generalized policy in the region, Latinamerica Press, with the support of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), has produced this special report which addresses the current situation that social leaders are facing in eleven countries of Latin America.

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The Ecuadorian government has decided to confront the social organizations opposed to its

political project by taking the organizations’ leaders to court to imprison them or restrain them with indefinite trials in order to silence them. Likewise, the government seeks to close down the organizations through a decree that threatens their stability and Luis Ángel Saavedra in Quito

Government implements new ways to criminalize and

control social protest.

SILENCE, FEAR AND COERCION

Javier Ramirez, campesino leader arrested for fighting against mining, on the day of his release after 10 months in prison.

ECUADOR

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limits their activities. The organizations, meanwhile, have not yet defined their strategies for dealing with the government threats, but there are looming options for social unity that concern the government.

In 2008, the Constituent Assembly granted amnesty to more than 360 people whose trials were related to protests and acts of resistance. All of these trials began before the government of Rafael Correa, who started his first term in 2007.

In 2011, the Ombudsman’s Office of Ecuador, led at the time by Fernando

Gutiérrez, issued a report which found that the practice of criminalizing social protest continued in the government, for it showed the existence of 21 new cases between 2008 and 2010. The new Ombudsman, Ramiro Rivadeneira, who is aligned with the government and who took office in late 2011, chose to cast into oblivion his predecessor’s report, citing methodological errors.

Since then, the government has lashed out in various ways against the organizations and the social protest. Salvador Quishpe, indigenous leader and prefect of the province of Zamora Chinchipe, in the southern Amazon, summarizes these new ways of lashing out, citing the control of the media; control of the poorest social sector through monthly installment of US$50, which is called “human development bonus” and is given to nearly two million people; the division of social organizations and associations; cooption of community leaders with job offers; and finally, the initiation of trials against those not docile enough for the government.

“Since you refuse to submit yourself, now you’ll go to trial,” says Quishpe while analyzing the ciminalization of social leaders.

Harassment of social organizationsEcuadorian social organizations have

slowly moved away from government influence and have began to take actions of opposition, such as the demonstrations of September and November 2014 in which they rejected, among other things, the labor reforms that restrict workers’ rights, the enforcement of Decree 16, issued in June 2013, which controls social organization, restrictions on freedom of expression and the criminalization of social protest.

Last Mar. 19, social movements staged another day of protest in nine cities. In addition to those issues already raised, women’s groups joined to reject the new sex education policy that is based on morality and abstinence, and other consumer groups affected by the new tariffs on imports also joined.

Decree 16 violates the right to freedom of association by requiring a series of reports with which the government can know about the actions and thoughts of organizations.

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“The entire state apparatus is controlled by an authoritarian government to shut down social organizations; they want to force us to report on each assembly, each meeting; say what resources [we have], what we have invested, who has given [the resources]. That is, they want a source of information that violates the right to free association,” said Nina Pacari, an historical leader of the indigenous movement, to Latinamerica Press, in regards to the requirements under Decree 16 for an organization to exist.

For his part, the current president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE), Jorge Herrera, expressed his concern about the use of this decree to close indigenous organizations down.

“Decree 16 is a measure that has caused unease within our organizations; it is a measure of bad faith that violates the constitutional framework,” says Herrera.

Within the context of the People’s Summit held in Quito on March 5 and 6, the CONAIE staged a march toward the National Assembly and the Constitutional Court to demand the repeal of the decree.

“We have made a claim of unconstitutionality but so far the judges are asleep and have not responded in regards to this request,” says Herrera. The CONAIE’s demand is the fourth claim of unconstitutionality that Ecuadorian social organizations have filed in regards to Decree 16 and that has not been processed by the Constitutional Court.

So far Decree 16 has been the basis for the December 2013 closure of the Fundación Pachamama, non-governmental organization in defense of the environment. It is feared that the decree will also be the basis for the dismantling of the CONAIE

as the General Comptroller of the State is demanding a number of documents and reports that go beyond the powers of the Comptroller and that seek to control activities and private decisions of an organization.

Threats and trialsThe forms of social control and

criminalization of protests that Quishpe has referred, has resulted in the silence of many organizations, some of which are linked to the government through economic agreements. Others are fearful of speaking out to avoid becoming vulnerable to possible closure.

Moreover, many leaders have also become silent. “They are threatened with a trial and many avoid comment publicly on the government. Also there are death threats,” says Marlos Santi, former president of CONAIE, to Latinamerica Press.

Indeed, in recent months social leaders, accused of sabotage and terrorism, have been arrested and sentenced, as in the case of campesino leader Javier Ramírez, who was released on Feb, 10 after spending 10 months in prison, or the case of Manuel Molina, another campesino leader detained for

“The entire state apparatus is controlled by an authoritarian government to shut down social organizations; they want to force us to report

on each assembly, each meeting; say what resources [we have], what we have invested,

who has given [the resources]. That is, they want a source of information that violates the right to

free association.”

—NINA PACARI

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four months after being accused of the same crimes. For these same crimes, the government seeks to arrest Mery Zamora, teacher and former leader of the National Union of Educators, despite having already been acquitted of the charges against her. At the request of the President, the Attorney General’s Office asked the Constitutional Court to annul the acquittal the National Court granted to Zamora.

Ramírez was arrested after participating in a meeting with the Ministry of the Interior which he had attended to ratify the decision of the people of Intag, in the north of the country, to oppose mining. After his arrest, the National Mining Company entered Intag and now is a divided population, without the power that once allowed them to stop mining

activities in their territories for over 20 years.

Arrested on July 9, 2014, Molina is accused of sabotage and terrorism for participating in a protest against the water law in 2009. Molina had no legal defense for three months because he was advised to “not make a fuss.” He was finally released on Dec. 4 of last year. Molina’s case shows another government strategy that is to initiate lawsuits and keep them open to use when a leader attempts to participate in a new protest.

Other open trials can also buy the silence of organizations, especially when these have maintained agreements with the government that have not been successfully fulfilled. Some organizations, especially indigenous organizations, that wished to participate in the March 19 protests, had to desist from doing so because were activated pending lawsuits from some years ago for failing to comply with the agreements signed with state institutions of this and previous governments.

Almost nonexistent optionsThe social movement’s options

for resistance are few because the government’s control leaves few opportunities for participation. This has caused those from the left and right to begin discussing ways of restoring autonomy to state institutions, especially to justice agencies and the electorate.

The talks the indigenous movements have with right-wing leaders have put them in the eye of controversy. This is used by the government to discredit the indigenous leadership and to plan for the formation of a new indigenous organization that brings together indigenous people who in the past were also questioned for their actions, as is the case of Antonio Vargas, Miguel Lluco or Delia Caguano.

In this scenario, social mobilization is presented as the only form of political participation that can return social movements their previous strength and capacity of advocacy. q

The talks the indigenous movements have with right-wing leaders have put them

in the eye of controversy. This is used by the

government to discredit the indigenous leadership and to plan for the formation

of a new indigenous organization that brings

together indigenous people who in the past were also

questioned for their actions.

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The phenomenon grows with the invisibility and repression of protests opposing the extractivism and who advocate

for political, cultural and territorial rights. Governments and transnationals have renewed the concept of “internal enemy,” and are prosecuting leaders of the social movements.

“Those are today the people excluded from the economic model and all who raise their voice against the injustices of the free market economy. The Mapuche are identified with terrorism. The dispute about property with timber companies is perceived as a brake on progress, a threat to the state of law that weakens

Arnaldo Pérez Guerra in Santiago

REPRESSION AGAINST THE “INTERNAL

ENEMY”

The strategy for social control to protect the neoliberal model is to criminalize the Mapuche people and social movements.

the national unity,” stated the attorney Eduardo Mella, in the magazine Reflexión No. 36, published by the Center for Mental Health and Human Rights.

Chile is a dependent economy, an exporter of natural resources, while the state is limited to protect the interests of large corporations and transnationals.

Environmental, regional and student mobilizations are accompanied by a constant presence of repression. Their leaders are legally prosecuted.

Rodrigo Mundaca, an agronomist who has denounced the theft of water in Cabildo, Petorca, and La Ligua in the Valparaíso region, by businessmen and politicians, including the Christian

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Police prepare to repress social mobilizations

Democrat former Minister Edmundo Pérez Yoma, was sentenced to 541 days in prison in April 2014 for “damages and calumnies” and faces additional judicial action against him in la Ligua, Quillota and Concepción.

Territories in conflict are militarized, as is the case of the Mapuche communities in Bío Bío, Los Lagos and la Araucanía and, recently, the valley of Chopa, in Caimanes, in the northern region of Coquimbo. The community has no water and is completely polluted by rubbish and waste from the Los Pelambres mine owned by the Luksic Group. Road blocks, hunger strikes and barricades have been the visible means of highlighting their demands.

For more than three months, dating from Nov. 2014, Caimanes put a road camp at the El Mauro reservoir — located 12 kilometers from Caimanes, where the mining company has deposited millions of tons of waste — after the company failed to abide by a Supreme Court decision obligating it to restore the natural riverbed of the El Pupio River.

Last December, the spokesperson for the community, Cristián Flores, was arrested and intimidated by the police. Nancy Reyes, his wife, says: “His arrest was a form of harassment and intimidation. It was staged; they created a crime in order to arrest him.”

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Last March 4, eight community members were wounded after an act of violent repression with helicopters, dozens of vehicles and blockades, against hundreds of protesters in Caimanes. One of them lost an eye due to buckshot used by the police.

Mapuche under fireDuring the most recent raid on

Ercilla, in la Araucanía, this past Feb. 26, Mapuche children were mistreated in the Coñomil Epuleo community that is claiming its ancestral lands. Members of the Investigations Police squad arrested the werken — the community’s traditional authority and messenger — Jorge Quiduleo and threatened and interrogated two Mapuche children who are four and eight years old.

“It was very traumatic, the police shouted at them to get out of their beds and get down on the floor. Under the pressure and violence, the children began crying out,” said Rosa Quiduleo, the two children’s grandmother.

Days before, the Supreme Court had ratified a decision in favor of three

children of this community, after the National Institute of Human Rights solicited a precautionary measure. The minors had been arrested after a raid and spent several days imprisoned and were brought to the courtroom with their hands and feet manacled.

Not one mass media outlet broadcast that in the middle of this past February six Mapuche political prisoners denounced torture in the prison at Angol, while an ex-priest Luis García Huidobro — defender of the Mapuche people and spokesman for the political prisoner, Emilio Berkhoff — was condemned to jail in an attempt to silence him.

Incarcerated Mapuches or those accused and being processed by the judicial system for their defense of political, cultural or territorial rights are recognized as political prisoners by human rights organizations, including the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned Chile last year for human rights violations against eight members of the Mapuche community in the case of “Norín Catrimán and others against the State.” This ruling established a precedent that is an important acknowledgment of the phenomenon of criminalization.

According to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the sentences condemning the victims — including the lonkos (the chief leaders) Segundo Aniceto Norín Catrimán and Pasqual Huentequeo Pichún Paillalao and the werken Víctor Manuel Ancalaf Llaupe — for alleged crimes of terrorism, emitted in 2002 and 2003 under the Antiterrorist Law, violates the principle of legality and the right to the presumption of innocence.

“The cases of criminalization and imprisonment for demanding territorial rights are increasing. Today there is an onslaught of judicial violence against the machis (spiritual/health authorities of the Mapuche people). Machis have been arrested and convicted: Millaray Huichalaf, Tito Cañulef, Francisca Linconao and Celestino Córdoba. Chile is applying the

“The cases of criminalization and imprisonment for

demanding territorial rights are increasing. Today

there is an onslaught of judicial violence against

the machis (spiritual/health authorities of the Mapuche

people).”

—RODRIGO GUERRA

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Antiterrorist Law promulgated by [the dictator Augusto] Pinochet, used today with the objective of repressing Mapuche demands,” comments the social scientist, Rodrigo Guerra, in statements to Noticias Aliadas.

In spite of the recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2014 against the application of the Antiterrorist Law, the administration of President Michelle Bachelet has continued applying it and its repeal is not mentioned, only its improvement.

“Between 2008 and February 2010 the government of Bachelet invoked the Antiterrorist Law in seven instances, with a total of 54 arrests of Mapuche members attributing them terrorist crimes,” pointed out the political prisoner, Héctor Llaitul. In 2014, the Mapuche organization, Meli Wixan Mapu, acknowledged the existence of “20 Mapuche political prisoners.”

Repress and infiltrateDiverse analysts agree that this

political and criminal strategy is spreading

dangerously “in a Chile that is awakening and whose streets are overflowing with protests against social injustice and the oppression of the market,” in the words of Paulina Acevedo. She further says, “Students, people in debt for housing, workers, indigenous, environmentalists are only some of the sectors that are in the target.”

An emblematic case is that of the student, Víctor Montoya, who spent 16 months in preventative incarceration, accused under the anti-terrorist law of supposedly placing a bomb in a police post in Feb. 2013. The prosecutor presented testimony from “protected’ witnesses and centered his case on the student of being a “vegan.” Montoya was absolved of the charges in two judgments last year. “It is the Antiterrorist Law that causes all this, you are considered guilty until you prove the contrary,” said Montoya.

Mireille Fanon, of the Frantz Fanon Foundation, commented about the Montoya case after her visit in 2014 as a human rights observer that the student “spent 16 months in prison because of false evidence under the pretext that the Chilean state need to demonstrate the existence of a terrorist threat. The State knowingly aids and abets the fabrication and use of illegitimate procedures always and when it attempts to reinforce its need to maintain control over the population.”

For Guerra, “there is a growing escalation and legitimation of the powers of [government] security agencies with the objective of repression and infiltration of social movements. The Antiterrorist Law — illegitimate and aberrant from a juridical standpoint — continues to be applied against social activists and principally against the authorities and members of the Mapuche communities, former political prisoners, young people accused of anarchism, as well as the okupas [who use vacant dwellings] and vegans who supposedly plant explosives. The majority of the trials have ended acquitting the accused after months or years of unjust imprisonment.” q

Diverse analysts agree that this political and criminal

strategy is spreading dangerously “in a Chile that

is awakening and whose streets are overflowing with protests against

social injustice and the oppression of the market.”

—PAULINA ACEVEDO

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CRIMINALIZATION OF INDIGENOUS PROTEST INTENSIFIES

People gathered in the central square in Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, on Mar. 19, to witness the re-opening of the Snuq Jolom Konob radio station.

GUATEMALA

Louisa Reynolds*

Government imprisons indigenous leaders charged without evidence and accuses human rights organizations to promote terrorism.

On the morning of Mar. 19, the town of Santa Eulalia, tucked away in the Cuchumatanes mountain range in the

northern department of Huehuetenango, was buzzing with anticipation. Locals had gathered in the main square to witness the re-opening of the Snuq Jolom Konob

*2014-2015 International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Elizabeth Neuffer Journalism Fellow.

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community radio station, which had been closed by mayor Diego Marcos two months earlier.

Created in 2000, Snuq Jolom Konob means “head of the people” in the Mayan Q’anjob’al language, a reference to a giant pre-Columbian monolith sculpture that exists in the area, of which only the head remains.

Staffed by indigenous volunteers, the station broadcasts in Q’anjob’al and has played a vital role in terms of saving this Mayan language — spoken by almost 100,000 people in the towns of San Pedro Soloma, San Juan Ixcoy, Barillas and Santa Eulalia — from extinction.

It has also allowed the Q’anjob’al community to voice its opposition to the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Cambalam River that has led to the displacement of local families. In 2011, the administration of President Otto Pérez Molina granted Hidro Santa Cruz, a subsidiary of Spanish corporation Hidralia Energía, a license to build the dam without obtaining local communities’ prior and informed consent, in accordance with International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.

The murder of community leader Andrés Francisco Miguel by armed security guards employed by Hidro Santa Cruz in May 2012 sparked off a series of protests throughout northern Huehuetenango that were met with heavy-handed repression from the central government.

President Pérez Molina, a retired army general, declared a state of siege in Barillas, suspending constitutional rights and placing the army in control of the area. In scenes reminiscent of the army’s onslaught against indigenous communities during Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war, soldiers and police raided the town, kicking down doors without search warrants and threatening women with rape.

Nineteen community leaders were detained and taken to a high-security prison in Guatemala City, charged with crimes ranging from armed robbery to terrorism. Some were eventually released due to lack of evidence after being unjustly imprisoned for up to 150 days and others are still awaiting trial.

According to Human Rights Ombudsman Jorge de León Duque, the detainees’ fundamental human rights were violated because they were not informed of the reason they were being imprisoned and they were not allowed access to translators even though they were Q’anjob’al speakers.

Political prisonersUnder the climate of repression that

the Q’anjob’al community has endured since Hidro Santa Cruz was granted the

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license to build the dam, Snuq Jolom Konob was its only remaining means of voicing discontent and planning resistance activities.

The station played such a vital role in the community that when the mayor of Santa Eulalia, who belongs to the opposition Lider party and is in favor of the dam, forcibly shut it down on Jan. 20, the people of Santa Eulalia were willing to lay down their lives in order to defend it.

During the confrontation between the townspeople and municipal employees that ensued, 20-year-old Pascual Basilio Pascual Diego was shot dead. His father, Domingo Antonio, and other eyewitnesses, said that the mayor, under the effects of liquor, drew his gun and shot him. The victim died in hospital two months later.

On Mar. 19, Snuq Jolom Konob was due to be re-opened. However, armed municipal employees forcibly prevented community media activists from entering the studio and to this day it remains closed. Since it was created 15 years ago, Snuq Jolom Konob had broadcast from the municipality’s premises.

“The attacks on the radio have occurred in a context of permanent aggression by the state against our ancestral people, which have organized in the defense of water resources, mountains, Mother Earth, the forests, life itself”, says Rigoberto Juárez Mateo, one of the leaders of the Plurinational Authority of the Q’anjob’al, Chuj, Akateko, Poptí and Mestizo People of Huehuetenango.

With the September elections looming, Juárez fears that these repressive actions against community leaders will intensify and will be disguised as political violence.

On Mar. 24, four days after he was

interviewed by Latinamerica Press, Juárez and another Q’anjob’al leader, Domingo Baltazar, were arrested without a warrant by two police agents in Guatemala City, after they traveled to Guatemala City to meet with human rights organizations that are documenting the human rights violations committed against their community. During the incident, lawyer Ricardo Cajas was physically assaulted by the two agents when he demanded that

they should produce an arrest warrant and read Juárez and Baltazar their rights.

Three days later, they appeared before Judge Otto Felipe Vásquez who set precautionary measures in lieu of remand. However,

after they left the courtroom they were detained once again by the police. They are accused of kidnapping and instigating criminal activity, charges which they deny.

Speaking from prison, Juárez told Guatemalan journalist Andrea Ixchiú: “We consider ourselves political prisoners. Even if we are behind bars we insist that our ancestral peoples should re-orient their struggle. Self-determination is the way. There is no other way because the state is not a viable option for us. The state has been built in order to repress our people, to harm us and to steal from us the little resources that we have”.

On the same day that Juárez and Baltazar appeared before Judge Vásquez, and were released and arrested for a second time, the body of q’anjob’al leader Pascual Pablo Francisco was found in the village of Chancolín, in the municipality of Barillas, with signs of torture. The community blames Hidro Santa Cruz for his death and the incident has heightened tensions between the q’anjob’al people, the company and the authorities.

Repressive actions against community leaders opposed to extractive industries and large scale infrastructure projects have increased dramatically under the

“We consider ourselves political prisoners. Even if we are behind bars we insist that our ancestral

peoples should re-orient their struggle.”

—RIGOBERTO JUÁREZ MATEO

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administration of Pérez Molina, say local human rights organizations.

According to the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders-Guatemala (UDEFEGUA), 657 human rights activists were attacked in 2013, a number that increased to 810 in 2014. This figure — the highest since UDEFEGUA began to record such incidents in 2000 — includes seven murders and 21 attempted murders.

One of the worst cases of violence unleashed by the current government against indigenous protestors was the massacre of eight indigenous protestors from the Northwestern department of Totonicapán. The peasant leaders were shot by soldiers using Israeli-manufactured Galil rifles during a road blockade held in protest against rising electricity prices in October 2012.

“This government has militarized everything and has used force and repression against protestors and social movements,” says Norma Sancir, a reporter for independent news blog Prensa Comunitaria, who was imprisoned for five days in September 2014 for covering a peaceful demonstration in the eastern department of Chiquimula.

Bad journalismInternational observers and NGOs have

also been targeted. In July 2014, two Peace Brigades International (PBI) observers who attended the violent eviction of a peaceful anti-mining protest in the village of La Puya, located in the municipality of San José del Golfo, 17.5 miles northeast of Guatemala City, were told that their residence permits had been terminated and that they had to leave the country within a week.

Interior Minister Mauricio López Bonilla said the case should serve as a “warning” to all international organizations and accused foreigners of inciting protests and manipulating the local population.

A disturbing trend under the current climate of criminalization of leaders of the social movements has been the fact that protestors and the human rights organizations that support them have been branded as “terrorists” by the Pérez Molina administration, a discourse that

has been echoed by right-wing media and commentators.

The expose “Sweden funds terrorists in Guatemala” broadcast by Canal Antigua TV journalists Sylvia Gereda and Pedro Trujillo in March 2012 is a clear example of this. The program accused the Swedish embassy of funding “organizations that promote political instability, terrorism and weaken the state” through cooperation programs that supported civil society organizations in the municipality of San Juan Sacatepequez, 20 miles north of Guatemala City, where indigenous communities have been protesting against the construction of a Cementos Progreso cement factory for the past eight years. At the time, UN Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Frank La Rue, said the program was an example of “bad journalism”.

The Canal Antigua TV channel is owned by Minister for Energy and Mining Erick Archila Dehesa and critics cite this case a clear example of how mainstream media outlets have been used to echo corporate interests.

“The media is controlled by monopolies and anyone who opposes large scale infrastructure projects that threaten the freedom of the people is branded as a terrorist”, says Sancir. q

“This government has militarized everything

and has used force and repression against protestors and social

movements.”

—NORMA SANCIR

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C riminalization of social protest in Bolivia has always been associated with rebellious actions of social

movements against a state that doesn’t act in defense of or represent their interests. In the past this has frequently led to violent confrontations. But, what happens when the new state is governed by a party of the social movements themselves?

The anthropologist Soledad Valdivia Rivera contends in her doctoral thesis that “the Bolivian case shows that the entrance of social movements into the political sphere has meant the genuine participation of groups that were

Fernando Valdivia Antisolis in Santa Cruz

SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN

THE TIMES OF THE PLURINATIONAL

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Indigenous rights clash with a government that declares it is defending Good Living.

previously excluded by the dominant political system,” referring particularly to the more than thirty indigenous and original peoples that live in Bolivia.

Consequently, with the approval of the Political Constitution of the State in 2009, criminalization of social protest would have taken more subtle forms, such as the delegitimizing of demands from the interior of the social movements that are the protagonists. So understands Hernán Ávila, director of the Center of Legal and Social Studies (CEJIS), an institution linked to the defense of the indigenous peoples in the country, who considers that “the outcome of the process is that the established power

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IX Indigenous March in defense of TIPNIS, Feb. 2012.

has been incapable of carrying out the spirit of the constitutional power” of the social, indigenous and campesino groups in particular.

The connecting thread of this theme is the challenge facing the social change process, of harmonizing development policies — whose organizing principle is economic growth — with the challenges of Good Living, understood as respect for nature as expressed in Pachamama, mother earth, along with other concepts.

Mining and indigenous rightsThe biggest conflicts that the

government of President Evo Morales, in office since 2006, has faced are those

linked to this sui generis contradiction. This is the case of mining, whose sustained growth in the last decade increased environmental pollution and/or the occupation of indigenous territories. According to the National Institute of Statistics, from 25 tons registered in the year 2000, Bolivia increased exports to 120,000 tons in 2014. Exports have reached historic highs in the last decade in Bolivia with zinc, lead and tin exports generating a total of US$12.3 billion, according to a report from the Ministry of Mining of Feb. 2012.

Among recent complaints of pollution by mining activities, are

18

those of representatives of the original communities of Porco, Manquiri and Cantumarca in the southern department of Potosí, as well as indigenous groups from the northern border region with Brazil and Peru about exploitation of gold in the Amazon region.

In the first instance, the Declaration of the Third Meeting of Environmental Leaders celebrated this past August en Potosí affirmed that the “Mining and Metallurgy Law makes individual and collective rights vulnerable and is in contradiction of the Political Constitution of the State and international conventions. This mining law does not recognize the rights of Original Indigenous Peoples and Campesino Nations and only benefits the cooperative

and salaried mining sector and limits the application of the right of consultation, self-government and self-determination of the Original Indigenous Peoples.” The government has responded to popular mobilizations with police repression. The breaking up a roadblock in Potosí in July 2014, for example, resulted in three arrests: Isidoro Jesús, age 39, José Quispe, age 45, and Román Gómez, age 47. They denounced mistreatment by the uniformed men.

Silvia Antelo, editor of the daily Sol de Pando, stated to Noticias Aliadas that in the department of Pando, that borders Acre, Brazil and Madre de Dios, Peru, the exploitation of gold by Brazilian citizens continues in spite of the government offer to have prior consultation and include royalty payments to the indigenous communities who reside in the Amazon areas where gold is abundant for auriferous exploitation.

In July 2010, the then director of the Agency for the Development of Macroregions and Frontier Zones (ADEMAF), Juan Ramón Quintana, reported serious environmental damages to the flora and fauna of the region caused by mining operations.

For denouncing this illicit activity, along with the abuses inflicted upon the Pacaguara indigenous people by the timber companies and other corrupt activities, on July 11, 2011, an edition of the Sol de Pando was confiscated by government agents and the newspaper had to deal with various types of harassment.

“We suffered criminalization by the state for defending one of the nations recognized by the Political Constitution of the State,” affirmed Antelo.

The case of TIPNISThe case with the most national and

international resonance has been the postponed construction of a highway crossing the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), that borders the departments of Beni and Cochabamba. Since 2011, this proposed

The Declaration of the Third Meeting of

Environmental Leaders celebrated this past

August en Potosí affirmed that the “Mining and

Metallurgy Law makes individual and collective rights vulnerable and is in contradiction of the

Political Constitution of the State and international

conventions.”

19

highway mobilized the indigenous communities of the region both against and in favor of the project.

In this conflict, however, the government took a step backwards and on Feb.10, 2012, it promulgated a law calling for a consultation with the communities of TIPNIS. On Dec. 7 of the same year, the government officially announced that it had consulted 58 communities of the 69 planned consultations and found a favorable position for removing the inviolability of TIPNIS. However, the International Federation of Human Rights along with the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights of Bolivia, questioned the validity of the results of the consultation, concluding in their final report that “the consultation process was not free, nor were people informed and the principle of good faith was not respected.”

Those who opposed the highway construction and who are against the government policies that promote the project should confront criticisms from within the indigenous movement of the lowlands (in the Amazon basin) which led to the formal division of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) the middle of 2014.

Another example is related to the struggle for the land. Ávila points out that the Law 477, called “Against Subjugation” in force since December 2013, “is nothing but protecting the large landowner private property.”

The rule establishes sanctions against “invasions or occupations as well as the execution of works or improvements, with violent or peaceful incursions, temporary or continuous, of one or several persons who do not prove ownership on the property, legal possession, rights or permissions on individual or collective private properties, assets that are the patrimony of the state, assets of public domain or fiscal lands.”

According to Ávila, now “it is impossible for a social movement that does not have lands” to have access to them, given that the rule establishes mechanisms to sanction and punish

those who intend to act to occupy them.The Bolivian experience complements

the approval of laws by the pro-government majority with a novel form of criminalization of social protest marked by the delegitimizing of demands from within the social movements that raise them. For now the discontent seems to have been expressed in the result of the elections for governors and mayors that took place on Mar. 29. Even if the ruling party Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) continues as the first and only national political force, the setbacks in departments such as La Paz, where it lost the control of the local government, are warnings that the majority that it holds is not a blank check. q

The Bolivian experience complements the

approval of laws by the pro-government majority

with a novel form of criminalization of social protest marked by the

delegitimizing of demands from within the social movements that raise

them.

20

IMPRISONED, DISAPPEARED AND MURDERED ACTIVISTS

Discontent is reflected in social and political mobilizations which are at risk of being criminalized.

MEXICO

Alberto Buitre in Mexico City

Government is being blamed for the systematic planning of forced disappearances of social activists.

La detention and disappearance of social and human rights activists, the assassination of social leaders and the arrest of

others for political reasons are part of “a government policy” aimed at discouraging organizations’ resistance to the abuse of power and repression in Mexico.

21

ALB

ERTO

BU

ITRE

So stated the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS), a mostly-peasant political organization with presence in nine states in Mexico, in the forum on forced disappearances that convened in January at the Autonomous University of Puebla, where two people “are disappeared” per day, according to the organization.

In Mexico there are more than 110,000 cases of detainees-disappeared, not just 23,000 as the Ministry of the Interior claim.

“More than just a social phenomenon of great importance and concern, the forced disappearance of persons is also a recurrent, systematic practice that has now become a state policy. Its goal is to silence the voice of protest, dissent and even

the call for our most fundamental human rights,” said the FNLS in a statement.

For the FNLS, among the 110,000 detained-disappeared are the 43 students of the “Isidro Burgos” Rural School in Ayotzinapa, who were massacred on Sep. 26, 2014 by the Iguala Municipal Police, in the southwestern state of Guerrero, and were allegedly incinerated in an adjacent landfill by members of the “Guerreros Unidos” drug cartel, with orders from the then-mayor, now imprisoned, José Luis Abarca and his wife, María de los Ángeles Pineda, who have been associated with organized crime since 2005, according to information from the Attorney General’s Office.

The forced disappearances are systematically planned with “the state’s acquiescence and responsibility, either by commission or omission,” says the FNLS.

Social terrorThe forced disappearance of persons as

part of the repression of social movements is

“More than just a social phenomenon of great

importance and concern, the forced disappearance of persons is also a recurrent,

systematic practice that has now become a state policy.

Its goal is to silence the voice of protest, dissent and

even the call for our most fundamental human rights.”

—NATIONAL FRONT OF STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM

22

a systematic state practice with participation from drug trafficking groups.

Ramón Islas, an academic in human rights at the Autonomous University of Mexico City, argues that, in the context of the war on drugs, the techniques of creating social terror in the country have evolved.

Islas told Latinamerica Press that today Mexico is living through a “stage of irregular warfare” in the war on drugs, during which unidentified drug or criminal gangs are also involved in the disappearance of people.

“Throughout the entire Mexican territory, the blood of the working people is being scattered. It is reflected, coupled with the thousands of disappeared detainees, in extrajudicial executions and unjust imprisonment. What was initially thought to be a climate of fear exclusive to northern cities [main operation centers for various drug cartels], today this crime lab is spreading to all corners of the country,” said Islas.

“In addition to the detention and forced disappearance of persons, there are new forms of repression, such as drying

up a community’s water supply, burning crops and huts, sexual assault and the criminalization of social protest,” explained Islas.

In 2013, 13 social activists were killed in the state of Guerrero. The majority were killed for opposing local chiefdoms who exploited the peasants of the area with the state government’s knowledge. So states the Peasant Organization of the Southern Sierra, whose leader, Rocío Mesino Mesino, was shot in October of that year. Her father, Hilario Mesino directly blamed governor Ángel Aguirre for the death of his daughter, and he said in statements quoted by the newspaper El Sur Acapulco that during Aguirre’s administration, “repression and criminalization against social organizations and community leaders has intensified.” To date, there are no persons charged for the crime.

Political prisoners

There are also social activists imprisoned for political reasons. So far

“Throughout the entire

Mexican territory, the blood

of the working people

is being scattered. It is

reflected, coupled with the

thousands of disappeared

detainees, in extrajudicial

executions and unjust

imprisonment.”

—RAMÓN ISLAS

“In addition to the detention and forced disappearance of persons, there are new forms of repression, such

as drying up a community’s water supply, burning crops and huts, sexual assault and the criminalization of social

protest.”

—RAMÓN ISLAS

23

into the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in December 2012, there have been 350 political prisoners.

The data are provided by the Free Nestora Committee, a civil organization that supports Nestora Salgado García, commander of the Community Police of the municipality of Olinalá, Guerrero, who was arrested in August 2013 on charges of kidnapping, but whose detention, according to her defense, is based on political causes.

The Free Nestora Committee notes that Salgado García is being politically criminalized, falsely accused of kidnapping, based on an operation that led to the dismantling of a network of sex trafficking of women and girls in Europe and Colombia, who were forced into prostitution in bars in Guerrero and other states in Mexico.

The organization adds that the case of Salgado García shows the “Mexican government’s stigmatization against Community Police”, a security and justice initiative of Guerrero rural communities that began in 1996 encouraged by the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities and the Union of Peoples and Organizations of the State of Guerrero, to address the rising force of paramilitary and drug trafficking groups.

According to the data provided by the Free Nestora Committee, of the 350 political prisoners, 13 are community police members imprisoned in Guerrero and four opponents to the La Parota dam, also in Guerrero. There are also some detainees recorded in the state of Puebla for opposing the construction of a thermoelectric plant.

But the largest number of political prisoners is recorded in the state of Michoacán, where more than 300 members of self-defense groups — created in 2013 with the support of the federal government to fight the drug cartel called Los Caballeros Templarios — have been imprisoned, including one of the self-defense groups’ founders, José Manuel Mireles Valverde, arrested in June 2014 for illegal possession of arms for the exclusive use of the Army.

However, Talia Vázquez Alatorre, a lawyer committed to the defense of all prisoners belonging to self-defense groups, argued at that time that Mireles Valverde was a “political prisoner” for the improper legal procedures followed during his arrest.

In November 2014, the former leader of the self-defense groups accepted a “conditional political agreement” with the Ministry of the Interior for gain his release.

The arrests for political reasons even reach the capital. Must be highlighted the case of Mario González, imprisoned for a year by the government of the Federal District for his participation in the demonstrations of Oct. 2, 2013 in the capital, on the 46th commemoration of the student massacre perpetrated by the Army in Tlatelolco in 1968.

While authorities continue banning social protest and treating social activists as delinquents, human rights organizations launch campaigns declaring that protest is a right. The National Network “All Rights for All” (Red TDT) launched in 2008 the campaign “Protest is a right, repression is a crime” and had to relaunch it in 2013 due to increased policies of criminalization of the right to dissent and protest and the impunity with which these policies are applied. q

According to the data provided by the Free

Nestora Committee, of the 350 political prisoners, 13 are community police members

imprisoned in Guerrero and four opponents to

the La Parota dam, also in Guerrero.

24

25

26

The Broad Front for Popular Struggle (FALPO) is an social organization that is accompanying popular demands

processes in the Dominican Republic since its founding in 1985. The FALPO used to be a radical movement that staged violent protests, but these protests have changed in recent years as the organization has opted for national demonstrations that are, as they say, civic, democratic and massive. Since the inception of FALPO, its members have been persecuted, repressed and killed by police, says Grabiel Sánchez, national spokesman for the organization for three years and 23-years member. One of the most violent scenes, he narrates, happened in June 2012 during a protest over the death of an athlete at the hands of police officers in the town of Salcedo, Hermanas Mirabal province, 155 km from Santo Domingo, the capital. According to Sánchez, the police fired at the crowd in an episode that resulted in 22 injured and four dead, according to figures collected by the press.

Gabriela Read, Latinamerica Press collaborator, spoke with Sánchez about

Grabiel Sánchez.

“HERE PROTESTS

ARE NOT CRIMINALIZED;

HERE PROTESTERS

ARE KILLED OR HURT”

Interview with Grabiel Sánchez, leader of a social organization.

the government persecution against demonstrators.

There are some who criticize the FALPO for its violent methods of social protest. What can you say about this?

Some people have wanted to stigmatize the FALPO as a group of violent struggle. But for the last five years we have been dismantling that perception. These days we have been able to hold many protests in which no tires are burnt, and our objectives are achieved. Always in towns, mainly in small towns, there is a tendency to take away legitimacy to protests we hold, but most of the people accept them. We ask them to stay home and not go to school or work, not open their businesses, and at the end of the day we march to show the support of the community.

Did the FALPO view violent struggle as a valid method of protest?

In many of these struggles, the ones who initiated violence were security agencies: the police and army, and sometimes

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

FRA

N M

ART

ÍNEZ

27

paramilitary organizations with the aim of spilling blood, causing grief, and to discredit the organizers of the demonstrations. At other times, the people themselves were those who responded to the offensive attacks by these organizations. When you hold a protest and bullets are thrown at you, people defend themselves. And the FALPO also caused some of these actions such as throwing stones against shots fired at them, setting tires on fire, all of that.

At what point did this change of methods of struggle occur and why?

Since 2010 we were proposing that, but it has been applied since 2012. We noted that in the process of struggle we spearheaded, the police and military repression was very strong, brutal, and we were getting beat by the security agencies, losing great leaders who were killed, sometimes shot and crippled, and sometimes their families forced them to disassociate from the struggle, and we were losing ground among the people because where there are shots and bullets, people don’t get closer. We did an analysis and understood that, given this situation, it was necessary to change the methods of struggle. The method the FALPO currently uses is civic, democratic and of mass protest.

What is the most common reaction of the authorities to the protests?

The most common reaction is violence with shots. Three years ago, we called a strike in Salcedo and senior military and police officers called our leaders asking them to end the strike or face the consequences. Police and soldiers went into the village with war weapons, killing people, and five died; 34 people were injured, some had to have their legs amputated [figures collected by reporters mention about 22 injured and four dead]. That was a massacre, and even today there is no single person who takes responsibility for those actions.

What media treatments do FALPO manifestations receive?

Local media are very radical against FALPO, but the national media is not. The national media does not have many small

interests within the towns. Here, there is a network of journalists and media that respond to the Dominican government; they are paid and their objective is to take away the credibility from any protest or any citizen who disagrees with the government. The press gives us some level of space. But the press prefers a violent strike to a march. Because violent strike has deaths, there’s blood, and that is covered immediately.

Are there cases of arbitrary arrests and house burglaries?

The FALPO has been a very battered organization; its leaders have been greatly suppressed. The founding leader, Jesús Rafael Diplan Martínez (Chú), was brutally murdered [by joint military and police troops on Sept. 28, 1990, after a three day strike]. That’s just one case. In Navarrete [in the northwest of the country] we can count dozens of murdered leaders, countless wounded comrades, mostly during the police administration of Pedro de Jesús Candelier and Rafael Guillermo Guzmán Fermín, former heads of the National Police [between 1999 and 2002 and 2007 and 2010, respectively]. Guzmán Fermín, nicknamed “the surgeon”, was known for giving orders to shoot the popular leaders in the knees to cripple them. Some had to have their legs amputated, and many others were killed. Throughout the country, the FALPO has a trail of leaders who have been shot, mainly in their lower limbs.

Do you think that protest is criminalized in the Dominican Republic?

The criminalization of protest is a strategy of governments worldwide to take away the legitimacy of and minimize protest, stop it from a legal point of view. Here we see that protest is not criminalized; here protesters are killed or injured. There isn’t a way for the state to increase penalties for leaders or popular groups. Here they shoot them in the legs to leave them disabled or in the heart or the head to kill them. Criminalizing protest is very bad. It is a state action to reduce the levels of protest, the size and intensity. But here it is worse: here leaders who protest are killed. q

28

Hernán Scandizzo in Buenos Aires

Court session in Zapala, Neuquén, in which charges are brought against Relmu Ñamku, Martín Maliqueo and Mauricio Rain.

CRIMINALIZATION OF PROTESTS SPREADS TO THE PERIPHERY

Indigenous communities and citizen assemblies are victims of repression for their resistance to natural resource extraction projects.

In recent years criminalization of social protest in Argentina has spread from the large urban centers to the periphery, particularly protests

organized to support indigenous territorial demands and struggles in defense of common lands led by socio-environmental assemblies.

ARGENTINA

29

CARL

OS

DA

RÍO

MA

RTÍN

EZ

“In the 1990s, the state response to the demands of unemployed people was clearly criminalization and, in recent years identified as kirchnerism, it is not so much repression which is the mechanism by which protests are broken up,” claimed Eduardo Hualpa, president of the Association of Lawyers for Indigenous rights (AADI), to Latinamerica Press. “There are other mechanisms, there are complicated dialogues, there are some who say there is cooptation, others who say that there is the incorporation of political projects; but, definitely, there are other phenomena in play that don’t happen in the case of the demands of indigenous communities or institutions. The state does not have a political proposal to integrate or incorporate indigenous demands with

respect to the self-determination of peoples,” he added.

The jurist Alberto Binder, member of the board of directors of the Latin-American Institute for Democratic Security (ILSED), agreed with the analysis of Hualpa, although he pointed out that in the urban areas a change in the state’s response has begun to take shape, a “greater repression” is being used against labor commissions of the leftist-classist tendencies that have departed from the “channels of standard negotiation” used by the union bureaucracy.

Binder regretted that the national government has not persisted in order that the protocols of state interventions in social protests are implemented by provincial police. According to the jurist, the application of these procedural norms, in whose development human rights organizations such as the Center for Legal and Social Studies and the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights participated, would avoid or reduce violence in instances of repression.

The report, “Minimum Criteria for the Actions of Police and Security Forces in Public Demonstrations”, released in

“The state does not have a political proposal to

integrate or incorporate indigenous demands

with respect to the self-determination of peoples.”

—EDUARDO HUALPA

30

2011 by the Ministry of National Security establishes, among other points, that the intervention of forces will be progressive, beginning with dialogue with the protest organizers; prohibits the police that could have direct contact with the demonstrators, carry firearms — a measure in effect since 2010 nationwide —, also prohibits the use of tear gas guns and limit the use of rubber bullets.

Due to the decrease in social protests in urban areas, led in some cases by social movements echoing the demands of peasants, indigenous and socio-environmental assemblies, “the middle class has begun to look at these problems as remote from themselves, so this makes these causes remain hidden,” warned Binder. According to the jurist, the loss of presence in urban centers has weakened the causes of the original peoples and of the socio-environmental assemblies that “have minimal support structure” and “paves the way for increased repression by provincial governments.”

“The defense structure of the human rights groups in the provinces is minimal and it is difficult for the larger human rights organizations in Buenos Aires to get there,” he added.

On the other hand, in his analysis about the advances and setbacks on criminalization, Binder emphasized the Antiterrorist Law, whose reform was approved in December 2011. The jurist cautioned that the definition of terrorism is not precise, and leaves a wide margin for interpretation and application.

“Now terrorism is any crime in the Penal Code that is done with terrorist purpose; that is to say, with the end of terrorizing, of imposing conditions on public authorities,” he said. The previous law, product of a reform in 2007, penalized the participation in an illicit association with the purpose of generating terror in the population and the financing of terrorist organizations.

Indigenous protestFor Hualpa, the indigenous people

“again appear to limit the economic and productive development of the country. We return to the texts of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, of Juan Bautista Alberdi, of the 19th century [that introduced the dichotomy ‘civilization or barbarism’],” he declared.

On April 13 charges were brought against three Mapuche leaders from the Neuquén province, in Patagonia, Argentina: Relmu Ñamku was accused of homicidal intent, and the werken (messenger), Martin Maliqueo, and the logko (political authority), Mauricio Raín, were charged of severe damages. The court case was originated in the Winkul Newen community’s resistance to the exploitation of hydrocarbons in their territory.

On Dec. 28, 2012, conflicts occurred when a judicial employee accompanied by police and representatives of the Apache petroleum company tried to notify the community of their eviction due to an official request of the company that intended to enter and work the oilfield, which had been immobilized by the Mapuche. During the conflict, the justice official, Verónica Pelayes, was wounded in the face by a rock.

The state prosecutor and the plaintiffs will ask for a sentence of 15 years in prison for Ñamku. If she is found guilty, the case could establish a negative precedent not only for indigenous demands but for social protests in general.

On April 13 charges were brought against three Mapuche leaders from the Neuquén

province, in Patagonia, Argentina. The court case was originated in the Winkul Newen

community’s resistance to the exploitation of hydrocarbons in their territory.

31

“Clearly with this judgment comes a warning to the communities to beware,” affirmed Darío Kosovsky, defense lawyer for the Mapuche. “There is an authoritarian criminal policy in the Neuquén’s Public Ministry because there is no legal basis for this type of judgment that is being attempted to be applied in this case.”

“The conflict is not about the throwing of a rock and the wound of this person, which is lamentable, but rather the real conflict is between the state, the petroleum company and the community. This fact remains as an adjustment variable to avoid any kind of resistance,” emphasized Kosovsky.

“This court case, besides the persons involved, has a more profound meaning; to create the domino effect, to bring the weight of the Penal Code on everyone who struggles against petroleum exploitation in the way that is occurring in Neuquén,” claims Ñamku. The Mapuche leader emphasized that the trial is a disciplining message “directed to all who oppose fracking.”

Petroleum criminalizationAlong the same lines, the exploitation

of hydrocarbons in Vaca Muerta, one of the main fields of shale oil and shale gas in the world, where fracking have unleashed territorial conflicts with the neighboring town of Añelo, should be mentioned. On Aug. 13, the Campo Maripe community suffered a fire of two homes, a community center and a warehouse after the provincial legislature approved the YPF-Chevron project to extract shale petroleum and gas in the area of Loma Campana, in a territory that the Mapuche claim as their own.

The exploitation of Vaca Muerta has generated a demographic explosion in Añelo by the possible jobs in the petroleum industry. In 2010 the area had 2,449 inhabitants, according the Population Census, and in 2015 would grow to 13,736 inhabitants, according to Idom, a consulting firm. This situation has overwhelmed the provincial and municipal capacity to respond so the company’s contributions are very important. For example, the YPF Foundation with the Inter-American Bank for Development have developed

guidelines for the urban design of Añelo to accomodate its growth. Also, the Argentine petroleum company through its foundation, as well as the French company Total, will finance the works to increase the supply of potable water in the area and have provided assistance to education and health centers.

In this regard, the federal prosecutor in Neuquen, María Cristina Beute, has expressed her concern about the financial contribution by the oil companies to ensure a wider deployment of police in the area.

“The Police function belongs to the State, it shouldn’t be outsourced, much less be put in the hands of someone with interests, such as not allowing production to stop. Security will then be organized in function of this economic interest and all that impedes it will be resolved in a manner that suits them,” warned Beute. q

“This court case, besides the persons involved, has a more

profound meaning; to create the domino effect, to bring the weight

of the Penal Code on everyone who struggles against petroleum

exploitation in the way that is occurring in Neuquén.” The trial

is a disciplining message “directed to all who oppose fracking.”

—RELMU ÑAMKU

32

Peasant organizations’ demands for access to land and adequate food are answered with government repression

and criminalization of the organizations’ leaders.

The most emblematic case of repression and criminalization of the struggle for land in Paraguay’s recent history is the Curuguaty massacre. Curuguaty is located in the eastern department of Canindeyú, about 270 km (168 miles) northeast of Asuncion, and it is where 11 peasants and six policemen were killed. On June 15, 2012 a squad of more than 300 police officers brought a warrant to evict a camp with

Gustavo Torres y Paulo López in Asunción

GOVERNMENT FREE TO

REPRESS

Authorities use various strategies to criminalize rural populations and peasants who defend their lands or demand the return of these.

just over 60 peasants who had occupied the “Campo Morumbi” estate in the district of Curuguaty. The peasants demanded the return of some 2,000 hectares of public property usurped in recent decades by the former president from the right-wing Colorado Party, Blas N. Riquelme. These were the events that the Congress used as a pretext to impeach President Fernando Lugo (2008-2012) a week later.

The peasant leader Rubén Villalta was arrested in Sept. 2012 for the death of the police officers in Curuguaty, while no one has been charged with the death of the 11 peasants. The trial against the 13 peasants accused in this

PARAGUAY

PAU

LO L

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Z

33

Annual march of the National Peasant Federation in Asuncion to demand agrarian reform and against agro-export model.

case, who face charges of trespassing property and criminal association, has been postponed by the court on several occasions.

Villalta, who was excluded from the case, has been in custody for 29 months and has been on three hunger strikes. However, Villalba was sentenced in February to seven years in prison for his alleged involvement in another case: obstructing the work of a prosecution investigative unit in 2008 that was investigating the complaint of the owners of a soybean farm in Pindó, in the Yasy Cañy district, in the northeastern department of Canindeyú. The peasants claimed that the owners

of this property were fumigating crops without following minimum security measures. Villalta was charged with crimes of “illegal arrest, grave coercion and duress.”

With the deepening of the agro-export model by the current government of Horacio Cartes, organizations and communities are even more determined to prevent the fumigation of crops and cultivation of transgenic varieties in their communities. For this cause, organizations like the National Peasant Federation (FNC) — with a strong presence especially in the northern departments of San Pedro, Concepción and Canindeyú, which are major soy

34

producing areas — put themselves on the line to prevent deforestation or fumigation.

In response, the government provides police protection to agribusinesses that fumigate and act in violation of environmental laws. The laws on the use of agrochemicals prohibit the use of “chemical defense” at 100 meters from any human settlement, local road or stream and require the treated plots to have a living barrier of at least two meters in height and five meters in width.

Even though most monoculture plots do not meet these requirements, the government deploys police operations to repress and detain peasant farmers. Added to this is a well-oiled judicial machinery that has indicted more than a thousand rural inhabitants who have risen up against the damage caused in their communities by glyphosate, which kills their animals, crops and has triggered cases of malformations and cancer in people exposed to the fumigations, even among the urban population that consumes the products treated or contaminated with agrochemicals. The latter is a fact according to studies by researchers from the clinical hospital

associated with the School of Medicine of the National University of Asunción.

The latifundioDiosnel Sachelaridi, Secretary

General of the Organization of Struggle for Land (OLT), argues that the main problem that must be fought are the latifundios, or large estates, and the export model that is dependent on the production of commodities. In contrast to this production model, he sees the need for a state policy to industrialize raw materials so that development reaches everyone and not only a handful of agricultural exporters who manage the soybean and meat businesses, including the US company Monsanto, which has the largest presence in the country.

Among the strategies used to persecute rural organizations, Sachelaridi mentions methods of “self-coup” — referring to a possible set up to frame peasants who claim a plot of land — by landowners themselves to fabricate an excuse to persecute farmers. The last episode that created major tension is one that occurred on March 28 in the Pindó estate, located in Naranjito, Yvyrarovaná district, Canindeyú department, where, according to the official version, some 150 peasants — who demanded the return of 5,000 Ha of land — attacked a facility by burning machinery and tanks. The losses reported by the company range from US$500,000 to $1 million. In relation to this episode, OLT members Benigno Coronel, Milciades Coronel and Epifanio Giménez were accused on charges of aggravated robbery, criminal association, grave coercion, threat of criminal offenses and creating security threats. Sachelaridi rejected the accusations and said that setting facilities on fire is not a method peasants use to fight for land.

Consulted by Latinamerica Press, Ramón Medina Velazco, Organization Secretary of the Popular Socialist Convergence Party (PCPS) — which is part of the Guasu Front of former

Among the strategies used to persecute rural organizations, Sachelaridi mentions methods

of “self-coup” — referring to a possible set up to frame

peasants who claim a plot of land — by landowners

themselves to fabricate an excuse to persecute farmers.

35

President Lugo and part of the Democratic Congress of the People (CDP) — emphatically stated that President Cartes accumulated “superpowers” from the moment he got approval for the PPP law (Public Private Partnership), which allows him to privatize assets, resources and public entities, and the amendment of the National Defense and Homeland Security Law to militarize the country without the consent of Congress.

Since Aug. 23, 2013, eight days after Cartes assumed the presidency, the legislation that amends the National Defense and Homeland Security Law has been in force, enabling the president to use the military to enforce internal mission orders without declaring a state of emergency and without congressional approval.

Cartes made the decision to modify the law when, two days after his inauguration, four workers and a policeman were found dead in an estate in the department of San Pedro (300 km north of Asunción). The policeman worked as an armed guard in the cattle farm during his “free time.” The attack was attributed to the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP).

Repression and deathIn late November 2014, the

humanitarian organization Service Peace and Justice-Paraguay (SERPAJ) — which monitors and analyzes the effects of militarization in society as a state security policy — submitted to the Human Rights Commission of the House of Representatives testimonies of residents of the militarized zone in the departments of San Pedro and Concepción. These testimonies reveal repression and death at the hands of the combined forces in the north of the country.

On Nov. 15, 2014, members of the Joint Task Force (FTC) — a group made up of police and military members that was created by presidential decree on Aug. 24, 2013, allegedly to repel the armed groups in the north of the

country — killed Vicente Ojeda, a 29-year-old father and resident of the rural settlement Arroyito, Núcleo 4, in an operation that, the task force said, went after members of the EPP and the Armed Peasant Group (ACA). In such operations, the troops commit abuse and arrest civilians with suspicions that, in many cases, cannot be sustained by the Public Ministry, which is later obligated to dismiss the charges.

“The only tools available to the people against the abuse of the Executive are citizen mobilizations, and in that sense, the People’s Democratic Congress represents the space to articulate the discontent against the unpopular and repressive policies of Cartes’s government,” says Medina Velazco.

In this context of state violence and closure of institutional avenues to channel complaints, organizations assume that the only way is keep going in the constant struggle for agrarian reform in a country where, according to data from the agricultural census, 2.6 percent of farms have 85.5 percent of the land. q

In such operations, the troops commit abuse

and arrest civilians with suspicions that, in many

cases, cannot be sustained by the Public Ministry,

which is later obligated to dismiss the charges.

36

PEASANTS VICTIMS OF CRIMINALIZATION

Support demonstration for peasant leader Magdalena Morales, one of the 700 women criminalized for fighting for land.

HONDURAS

Jennifer Ávila in Tegucigalpa

Thousands of peasant women and men have been imprisoned for demanding land reform.

Honduras is one of the poorest and most violent countries in the world. This poverty and violence directly affects

the vulnerable sectors of society, such as peasants, who have recently denounced the criminalization of 4,200 peasants,

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700 of whom are women, according to the international organization La Vía Campesina.

According to Rafael Alegría, current deputy in the National Congress and leader of the international organization La Vía Campesina the situation for peasants is very difficult, even more serious in the context of repression and the food crisis characterized by shortages of basic grains and meats in Honduras due to climate change and conflict in agriculture.

“There is a serious agrarian crisis, and there is an exclusion of a large group of farm workers as a result of the application of the neoliberal model since 1992,” Alegría told Latinamerica Press.

The peasants demand a new law for land reform in the country. Many organizations have begun a process of land recuperation, especially in the Aguán and Sula valleys in the north of the country, with land richest in natural resources and the most productive.

“The peasants occupy the land in response to the inability of the National Agrarian Institute (INA), to address [their demand for land]. For this, the peasants are severely criminalized; there are around 4,200 peasants who have gone to jail in just four years, and more than 162 peasants killed, including many in Bajo Aguán; 723 women have been in jail and now they have to comply with alternatives measures to prison like signing each week in court. That generates enormous economic harm to peasants because they don’t have enough money for even the [transportation] ticket, or food and they miss the workday. It’s a situation of severe economic impact,” said Alegría.

The peasants are prosecuted on charges such as illegal usurpation of land, damage to private property and even sedition.

A 70 percent of the more than 8 million people of Honduras live in poverty, and half of the 4 million peasants have no access to land due to the land monopoly by a few, which keeps peasants mired in extreme poverty. The Agricultural Sector Development Modernization Law, approved in 1992 by the government of former President Rafael Leonardo Callejas (1990-94), broke up the land reform process initiated in 1960 and divided the peasant movement when it made way for the negotiations of the land. Many

“There are around 4,200 peasants who have gone to jail in just four years, and more than 162 peasants killed, 723 women have been in jail and now they have to comply with alternatives measures to prison like signing each week in court.”

—RAFAEL ALEGRÍA

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cooperatives were broken up by the lack of support for production, and big businessmen offered to buy them. Because of this, a bill to revive the agrarian reform and make it more comprehensive and inclusive has been introduced. But, it has been already a year without any discussion of this matter in the legislature.

The official versionTo find a way to resolve this situation,

peasants have mobilized and protested at various times this year in front of the National Congress, the Supreme Court and even the INA.

For the director of the INA, Ramón Lara, the number that peasant organizations release about criminalized people is not real, and he ensures that there are many misunderstandings in regards to the issue of evictions.

“All prosecutions are related to the legal nature of the land; they go to court proceedings because courts must show who the real owners of the land are, and there are trials that last 8 to 10 years and when that time passes, they are given eviction notices. So sometimes the farmer does not understand that after having the land for so many years, he is evicted. We have intervened so that the legal actions [against them] are removed, entering in joint ventures with them and in some cases we have avoided more deaths in the land dispute. We believe that the 4,200 figure is not real, that is to draw attention. [The number of imprisoned peasants] definitely does not reach this number. I’m not saying that there are no cases, but it’s not in that dimension,” Lara told Latinamerica Press. He also states that the INA is responsible for investigating how many prosecution cases of peasants exist.

Lara also believes that the problem is less from the government and more a responsibility of the peasants themselves, who have not understood, according to him, the value of the land, and when they have the opportunity to sell it without thinking that the state itself has invested heavily in the land.

“We want the spirit of land reform to reach all peasants. Daily, we live conflicts

that used to be between agricultural entrepreneurs and peasants, but now more than 80 percent of the conflicts we have are a struggles among peasants themselves”, ensures Lara.

Lara has called the whole process of land reform a “failure” because peasants sold their land, even when the government created the Agricultural Modernization Law in 1992, replacing the Agrarian Reform Law and allowing peasants to sell the land amid a situation of poverty and abandonment that the state itself had caused among the peasants, who at that time had land but had no support for production.

Repression against peasant womenMagdalena Morales, of the National

Confederation of Farm Workers (CNTC), was imprisoned, accused by the company Azucarera del Norte (AZUNOSA), part of the South African transnational SABMiller, of land robbery, damages and sustained damages. Morales was arrested on July

The Agricultural Sector Development Modernization

Law, approved in 1992 by the government of former President Rafael Leonardo

Callejas (1990-94), broke up the land reform process initiated in 1960 and divided

the peasant movement when it made way for the

negotiations of the land. Many cooperatives were broken up by the lack of support for production, and big

businessmen offered to buy them.

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27, 2013, imprisoned and assigned to a female judge, who dictated precautionary measures as an alternative to prison, forcing her to sign in each week in court. Morales is a peasant leader in Yoro, in northern Honduras, and she ensures that women are the most affected by this crisis.

Morales and 108 others, including three underage girls, were prosecuted because of this land restoration process in Yoro.

“We were imprisoned, [had to go] to court to sign in. Even now with our own efforts, we have helped release one third of our co-workers, but we still have 35 peasant co-workers under judicial measures. It is regrettable that, in Honduras, transnational corporations have rights but we Hondurans are displaced to the riverbanks as if we have no right to life. I have children; I had to tell them to not even mention my name; I had to take one of my daughters out of school because many asked about me, I feared repression. In another case against the CAHSA [Honduran Sugar Company], also in this sector, three co-workers were killed and no one is paying for these crimes with jail time”, Morales said in an interview with Latinamerica Press.

The killings occur during land recuperation processes and remain unpunished.

Like Morales, many rural women are prosecuted for their struggle to recover land.

“We have 2 million landless peasants, single mothers who seek to give their families a better life. When we want to recover a parcel of land to improve our situation, we are criminalized. We rural women are being killed and criminalized, my organization alone has 700 who are sentenced and are going to sign in at the court, two co-workers were killed, nine children were abandoned; that has to be a government responsibility”, says Morales.

The current government of President Juan Orlando Hernández affirms he supports farm workers and ensures having restored order in Bajo Aguán, but

Morales says this support is actually for the landlords, not inland peasants.

“[The government] gives them projects, irrigation systems, and we the peasants are being replaced by the landowners. On our behalf, [landowners] receive large amounts of money that are to favor small and medium-sized producers. We watch the news that say the government favors peasants; earlier this year we had a sit-in at the INA because they want to close it, at the Supreme Court because the judges are involved with the imprisonment of farmers and at the National Congress to demand a law for comprehensive agrarian reform. We will continue in the streets to demand our rights”, Morales concluded. q

“We have 2 million landless peasants, single mothers who

seek to give their families a better life. When we want to recover a parcel of land

to improve our situation, we are criminalized. We rural

women are being killed and criminalized, my organization

alone has 700 who are sentenced and are going to sign in at the court, two co-workers were killed, nine children were

abandoned; that has to be a government responsibility.”

—MAGDALENA MORALES

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B razil is distinguished by various international organizations — including the United Nations — as a model for poverty

reduction. Various government social programs like Bolsa Familia, or Family Grant, have lifted 36 million people out of poverty since 2003. However, as a symbol of the country’s typical contradictions, poverty remains criminalized, as are social movements fighting for greater justice and dignity for Brazilian citizens.

“Violence is a very present and visible element of poverty in Brazil; it disproportionately affects the poorest communities in both urban and rural areas, and in turn, further exacerbates this poverty. In addition, state agents

José Pedro Martins in São Paulo

HARSH POLICE REPRESSION

AGAINST SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Citizen initiatives seek to prevent the criminalization of protests.

responsible for security tend to stereotype the poor, particularly the inhabitants of the favelas, as ‘criminals’,” according to “A criminalização da pobreza – Relatório sobre as causas econômicas, sociais e culturais da tortura e outras formas de violência no Brasil” (“The criminalization of poverty: A report on the economic, social and cultural root causes of torture and other forms of violence in Brazil”), published in March 2010 by the Center for Global Justice, the World Organization Against Torture and the National Movement of Street Children.

What is most serious in the Brazilian context is that the action of social movements fighting to definitively overcome poverty and social injustice

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Mass demonstrations in June 2013 demanding the government increased investment in health, education, housing, basic sanitation.

are also being harshly criminalized. Furthermore, the National Congress is processing bills that would modify the Penal Code and criminalize actions during large demonstrations, and in other cases.

These parliamentary initiatives stem from actions by social movements in various places, and especially the large demonstrations that took place in June 2013 in dozens of Brazilian cities.

Crime of terrorismThis is the case of 2011 Senate Bill

(PLS) 728, which sought to criminalize terrorism, aimed specifically at the hosting of the FIFA World Cup in July 2014. It was not approved. However, another bill was introduced shortly after the June

“Violence is a very present and visible element of poverty in Brazil; it disproportionately

affects the poorest communities in both urban and rural areas, and in turn, further

exacerbates this poverty.” —REPORT ON THE ECONOMIC,

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ROOT CAUSES OF TORTURE AND OTHER FORMS OF

VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL

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2013 demonstrations, coinciding with Brazil holding the Confederations Cup, a pre-FIFA World Cup tournament.

A joint committee of 14 deputies and senators proposed Bill 499 in November 2013, defining terrorism as “causing or inflicting terror or widespread panic through aggression or attempted aggression against life, body or health, or deprivation of personal liberty” and mandates 15 to 30 years in prison for those convicted of the crime.

Due to lack of consensus, the bill did not pass before the FIFA World Cup, but still can be put to a vote at any time. For many human rights organizations, this legislation would mean an even harsher criminalization of social movements.

“The [FIFA World] Cup happened, the bill was not approved, and there was none of the chaos forecasters say would occur regarding violence against our guests. There was not any violence against people who came to watch the World Cup in Brazil,” said Senator Paulo Paim of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Rio Grande do Sul, one of the most critical voices against of parliamentary initiatives aimed at criminalizing social movements.

“We are totally against any kind of criminalization of social movements. We consider it a legitimate right to protest and mobilize. I very much applauded the demonstations in June and July 2013, when people went to the streets, protesting and demanding greater investment in health, education, housing, basic sanitation,” the senator added.

Even without the approval of specific bills, the criminalization of social

movements is already happening in Brazil. The debate resurfaced with force during the harsh police crackdown on a demonstration by striking teachers in the southern state of Paraná.

On Apr. 29, more than 200 people were injured in the police offensive against the teachers. The repression, which included tear gas, rubber bullets and

even dogs, generated a wave of protests across the country.

Days later, on May 6, a hearing of the Federal Senate Commission for Human Rights and Participatory Legislation was held to discuss the issue. “We express concern that the violence generated between the strikers and security forces of Paraná showed the inability of institutions, including demonstrators, to

“We are totally against any kind of

criminalization of social movements. We consider it a legitimate right to protest and

mobilize.”

—PAULO PAIM

Even without the approval of specific bills, the

criminalization of social movements is already

happening in Brazil. The debate resurfaced with force during the harsh police crackdown on a

demonstration by striking teachers in the southern

state of Paraná.

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manage the crisis and dialogue. This is a fundamental issue of democracy. We are willing to discuss and mediate in the current conflict which emerged under this situation,” Irina Karla Bacci, Human Righs advocate of the presidency’s Human Rights Secretariat, said during a hearing.

Popular response“It was not a confrontation. It was a

massacre. A confrontation is when the forces are balanced and there, in that moment, they were not. I was there representing the Senate. I experienced and saw what happened. What we saw were two hours of tear gas, dogs, shooting rubber bullets,” Senator Gleise Hoffmann, of the PT of Paraná, said at the same hearing.

On the other hand, there has been firm action by the social movements themselves and other sectors against the criminalization of protest. In late 2014, for example, the Council of Cities, linked to the Ministry of Cities, created a Special Committee on the Criminalization of Social Movements.

According to a decree published in the Official Gazette, the purpose of the commission is to “prevent the criminalization of social movements and organizations” precisely as a result of initiatives such as PLS 499, which defines the crime of terrorism.

Committees against the Criminalization of Social Movements have also been established in several states, and have created a national campaign based on a manifesto signed by some of the most important and historic human rights organizations in Brazil, like the Justice and Peace Commission of São Paulo, the Santo Dias Human Rights Center of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, the São Paulo Archdiocese’s Vicariate of Street People Pastoral, the group Torture Never Again-São Paulo and the Committee Against Genocide of Marginalized Black and Poor Youth.

Conservative and progressive forces are involved in the debate on the criminalization of social movements in Brazil, and its future will define much of the course of Brazilian democracy. q

Committees against the Criminalization of Social

Movements have also been established in several states, and have created a national campaign based on a manifesto signed by

some of the most important and historic human rights

organizations in Brazil.

Conservative and progressive forces are

involved in the debate on the criminalization of social

movements in Brazil, and its future will define much of the course of Brazilian

democracy.

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DEMONIZATION AND CRIMINALIZATION

Protests against mining project that will affect agriculture in the department of Arequipa.

PERU

Víctor Liza in Lima

Peasants and defenders of the land suffer harassment by judicial authorities thanks to legal tools developed to favor economic power.

Since the beginning of the present century, social conflicts about mining and the environment in Peru have

been a constant. Place and protagonists may change, but the story follows the same script even during the present

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government of President Ollanta Humala, who during his electoral campaign of 2011 promised to resolve these conflicts with dialogue and respect the will of the communities.

The cases of Conga in Cajamarca and Espinar in Cusco (2012) reveal that although presidents change, the reality of deaths and wounded persists. In the first case, the government intended to give approval to the Conga mining project of the Yanacocha

mining company that was widely opposed by the people of Cajamarca. Protests continued and police brutally repressed them leaving five dead. In Espinar, the inhabitants of this Cusco province, led by then mayor Oscar Mollohuanca, took to the streets against the pollution produced by the Swiss mining company, Xtrata-Tintaya. There were also deaths by repression at this site.

The most recent conflict is happening in the province of Islay, in the southern province of Arequipa. Since Mar. 23, the population, mostly peasants, are on indefinite strike against the Tía María mining project of Southern Copper Corporation, financed by Mexican capital, because it will affect the rivers and the agriculture and livestock. Confrontations have resulted in three deaths (two civilians and one police officer), as well as hundreds of wounded. In spite of this, President Humala has opted, in a recent message to the nation, to permit the company to “decide” if the project continues or not. The company announced later its decision to suspend the project for sixty days causing more indignation among the protesters.

The lawyer and human rights activist, Wilfredo Artdito, told Noticias Aliadas that this problem “has been getting more serious in the last 10 or 12 years in which measures have been taken to neutralize the opponents of the projects, treating them as delinquents, but also resulting in actions against them that can only be defined as crimes.”

At the end of March, Julio Morriberón Rosas, spokesman for Southern CopperCorporation, called the protesters

“[The criminalization] has been getting more serious in the last 10 or 12 years in which

measures have been taken to neutralize the opponents of the projects, treating them as

delinquents, but also resulting in actions against them that can only be defined as crimes.”

—WILFREDO ARDITO

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“anti-mining terrorists.” The term has been repeated by the press, various opinion leaders and members of parties of the right in Congress, such as Juan Carlos Eguren, of the Popular Christian Party (PPC), which attempted to link the opposition to Shining Path, the terrorist group.

Also, a “discriminatory burden” in the police repression against the protesters must be added according to Ardito. “In Lima the demonstrators are beaten or wounded and no one has died until now; but in the interior of the country, acts of much greater violence that have resulted in deaths have been occurring, overwhelmingly in Andean or indigenous areas. This happens because in Lima repression is not as violent as in other parts of the country, he explained, adding that the media contributes to discrimination by branding indigenous people as manipulated and irresponsible which has led to peasants being perceived as stupid, stubborn, ignorant and violent.”

Imposition of the bulletBesides the discredit of social protests,

influencing public opinion, the principal leaders of the opposition movements to the extractive projects are blamed for alleged acts of vandalism and denounced before judicial authorities. This is because Alan Garcia`s second government (2006-2011) promulgated a series of laws to criminalize protest. This is the imposition of the bullet.

In 2007 a majority in Congress approved Legislative Decree 982 that

modifies Article 20 of the Penal Code declaring as unpunishable members of the Armed Forces and National Police who “during the carrying out of their duties and the use of their weapons in standard procedures” cause wounds or death to any person. In other words they have carte blanche to wound or kill.

The law also considers that extortion, understood

as obtaining economic advantage by threat, includes “advantages of another kind,” in the words of Ardito, such as protests and road blocks, which distorts the term. Whoever engages in these actions is sanctioned with sentences between five and ten years in prison; if these actions are done by a group, as is normally the case, the sentence can be up to 25 years.

Besides the discredit of social protests, influencing public opinion, the principal

leaders of the opposition movements to the extractive projects are blamed for alleged acts of vandalism and denounced before

judicial authorities.

In 2007 a majority in Congress approved

Legislative Decree 982 that modifies Article 20 of the Penal Code declaring as unpunishable members

of the Armed Forces and National Police who

“during the carrying out of their duties and the use of their weapons in standard

procedures” cause wounds or death to any person. In

other words they have carte blanche to wound or kill.

47

Another norm is Law 30151 that grants impunity to military and police personnel in cases of violation of human rights; and Legislative Decree 1095 that authorizes the Armed Forces to intervene in conflicts without the declaration of a state of emergency.

In the case of public officials, such as mayors or regional governors, who participate in protests, they are not only subject to prosecution but also barred from holding public office. In the case of Mollehuanca, Mayor of Espinar, he was arrested and imprisoned in a jail located 800 kilometers from Espinar. The District Attorney asked for a 10 year sentence for the former mayor.

Besides public officials, numerous leaders of social organizations are being charged and possibly facing prison. For example, there are 53 people accused of the wounding and death of the security officers during the “Baguazo,” a protest of Amazon communities in the northeastern city of Bagua on June 9, 2009 against a series of legislative decrees which permitted the parceling of indigenous land and nature reserves in the Amazon region into large concessions for mining, oil drilling and logging, where 23 police and 10 civilians were killed, commented Juan José Quispe, a lawyer from the Institute for Legal Defense (IDL). Quispe said that Santiago Manuin, leader of the Awajún community, is among them.

“Due to political pressure, people who had nothing to do with the acts of vandalism resulting from the eviction at the Curva del Diablo are taken on trial,” questioned Quispe. In addition, Quispe also questions that the Minister of Interior at the time, Mercedes Cabanillas, the police general in charge of the operation, Luis Muguruza and the former director of the Police, José Sánchez Farfán, only appear as witnesses in another legal proceeding.

Unconstitutional Decrees

In the case of recent protests in Islay, one of the leaders, Pepe Julio Gutiérrez, has been arrested for the alleged crime

of bribery after two audios appeared in which presumably a lawyer for the Southern Copper Corporation, owner of the Tía María project, attempts to bribe him in exchange for stopping the protests. Quispe says that this arrest is strange because if this has been done with someone who presumably is negotiating to stop a protest against a private company, the lawyer should also be arrested.”

Gutiérrez was removed from his political party, the leftist Tierra y Libertad, because of his suspiciously felonious behavior.

Popular organizations are not remaining on the sidelines with their arms crossed. Ardito pointed out that campaigns to collect signatures are underway in order that these contentious decrees be declared unconstitutional, as well as denouncing them before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Quispe added that the IDL as well as other human rights organizations have stated their concern regarding a decree solicited by the head of the President’s Cabinet, Pedro Caterino, in which the Congress would delegate powers to the Executive Branch for the use of force equally against organized crime and persons who protest.

“This decree should be modified because it does not differentiate between the types of force used, keeping in mind that firearms or grenades should not be used in controlling disturbances during social protests,” he declared.

In spite of these initiatives, the situation seems to be in favor of the government — and the extractive industries — thanks to these contentious rules and laws. q

In the case of public officials, such as mayors or regional governors, who participate in protests, they are not only subject to prosecution but also barred from holding public office.

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