Information About:

Resources For:

Get Email Updates!

 

Subscribe to ART's Front Page

Syndicate content

News Feeds

Coup d’état in Honduras elicits International Condemnation

Sunday June 28, 2009  Tom Loudon

A National Constitutional Referendum had been scheduled in Honduras for today, sparking tensions between the President and other branches of the government; the Congress and Supreme Court had ruled against the referendum during the past week.   Last Wednesday General Romeo Vasquez refused to cooperate in conducting the referendum and President Zelaya fired him. The next day President Zelaya and supporters stormed the base where the ballots were being kept, and removed them. The situation was tense, but it was expected that the referendum would be conducted today without major incident.

Join our Election Observer Delegation to Bolivia

It is an exciting moment for Bolivia. The continent’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, has led a sweeping reform movement which includes mandated indigenous representation in the government for the first time.

Address by Miguel d'Escoto to the U.N. responding to the Coup in Honduras

To the Plenary Session on the Situation in Honduras
UN Headquarters , New York, 29 June 2009
 
Excellencies,
 
It is with a heavy heart and deep personal outrage that I open this plenary session to consider the coup d’etat that interrupted the democratic and constitutional rule of President Manuel Zelaya in the Republic of Honduras yesterday, the 28th of June.

AIDESEP Warns that Persecution Continues and Announces that it will Withdraw from the Dialogue if it Persists

 

AIDESEP, June 24, 2009.
AIDESEP demanded of the Executive and Legislative powers of Peru to halt the persecution of the indigenous leaders throughout the interior of the country, otherwise, indigenous representation will be obligated to withdraw from the Coordination Group for the Amazon Peoples because while willing to demonstrate good will and engage in dialogue, the government insists on persecution of the representatives of Amazonia.
Daysi Fasabi Zapata, vice-president of the AIDESEP reported yesterday that around 7:30 PM, officials of Utcubamba and four police officers on a patrol entered the headquarters of the Regional Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the North Amazon - ORPIAN looking for indigenous leaders and, not finding them, arrested a young Awajun student Juanito Kunchikui.

Letter from NAFTA Country Legislators to Presidents Calderon and Obama and Prime Minister Harper

Fifteen years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into effect, it has
become obvious that many of the promised benefits of the agreement have not come to be. As Members
of our Parliaments and Congress in Canada, Mexico and the U.S., we ask you, on behalf of our
constituents as well as civil society organizations, to consider a new, people-centered fair trade model....

U.S.-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous massacre

During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon Rainforest.

Alberto Pizango Calls for Nonviolent Resistance In a Speech at the Indigenous Summit in Puno, Peru

Alberto Pizango gave this speech (in Spanish) to the IV Continental Indigenous Summit just one week before police fired on blockades in the Amazon region. He calls upon the indigenous to communicate to the Peruvian government that there exists an indigenous population willing to claim and defend their lands. He makes the final point that Peruvians cannot continue to obey the rule of law, when the government, who is supposed to enforce the law, has no regard for human rights.

Solo una semana despues de este discurso por Alberto Pizango en el Encuentro Indigena en Puno, Peru, el ejercito peruviano ametrelló los bloqueos en la región Amazonica. El insta que los y las indigenas comuniquen al gobierno que hay un pueblo indigena quien esta dispuesto a reclamar y defender sus tierras. Dice que no es necesario obedecer el estado de derecho cuando el gobierno no respeta los derechos humanos.

 

Ashaninika delegates at the IV Continental Indigenous Summit of Abya Yala speak about uprising in Peru’s Amazon

 

From May 27 – 31, I attended the IV Continental Indigenous Summit as an international observer for the Alliance for Responsible Trade and the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) of which ART is a part. Over 6000 representatives of indigenous peoples from throughout the Continent and 500 observers participated in the Summit which focused on the unprecedented global economic and climate change crisis that the current economic system has produced.
The Summit took place in the context of mounting tensions between the Government of Peru and the indigenous peoples of Peru’s Amazon. For two months, over 30,000 indigenous have sustained nonviolent protests along the roads and waterways of Peru’s Amazon. Protests are in response to a series of Presidential decrees issued under the U.S.-Peru FTA implementation law that violate indigenous rights and open the way for an unprecedented expansion of new transnational petroleum, mining, logging and mono-cropping in the Amazon rainforest.
 

Indigenous Summit calls for Defense of Mother Earth- Peruvian government responds with a massacre

Peru Blog June 8, 2009

Last week I returned to Washington DC from Puno, Peru where over 6000 representatives of indigenous peoples and 500 international observers gathered for the 5-day IV Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples. In Puno, I had the privilege of meeting with representatives of Peru’s indigenous peoples who have sustained peaceful protests for nearly two months in response to the U.S.-Peru FTA implementation law which violates indigenous rights and territories. Just days after the Summit, in a shocking act of aggression, Government forces opened fire on peaceful indigenous protestors, killing as many as 60 in the Peruvian Amazon.

Syndicate content