translated from Spanish: Indigenous leaders launch desperate call in Europe

“They take us out of our territories. We oppose and are imprisoned. We wear out paying lawyers: if it’s not for the forest, it’s about the river,” says in Brussels Sandra Calel Camuec, Mayan leader poqomom of northern Guatemala. Calel chairs the Mocohan Neighborhood Association in Purulha, Lower Verapaz. Like her, other leaders from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Colombia brought a call for help to the European institutions this week (November 11-15, 2019).
Although the issue comes from afar, the current upsurge in murders of environmental leaders in Latin America was the subject of a recent statement (07.11.2019) from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Harsh words for Justice
“It should be emphasized that indigenous women who take leadership are especially vulnerable. To the criminalization, sexist and patriarchal violence is added”, explains Francisca Núñez de Brigadas de Paz Internacional, an organization that supports this tour. Something is common in these conflicts: it is communities against large development projects or against agribusiness.
The pattern also repeats impunity and, especially in rural areas, lack of access to justice. “Justice? Rather, we are very afraid to give information; the first thing our bodies demand,” says DW Nora Ramírez, board of directors of the National Center for Field Workers in Honduras.
“We do report, but it’s no use.  The most they do is put us in a military man who follows us, not protects us,” Ramirez continues and remembers that Berta Cáceres, the Honduran leader murdered in March 2016, had a protection scheme.  “Justice in Honduras leads to death,” Ramirez accuses us.
“In Guatemala, Justice is dominated by the State. Patriarchal violence against indigenous women is systemic,” Thelma Pérez, Maya ch’orti leader and representative of the Ixmulew Network of Ancient Healers, tells DW Thelma Pérez. She has filed rape allegations twice. No answer.
For her part, the Honduran leader accuses something similar: “When we are going to denounce, they accuse us of having left our homes. They say we seek to be raped for getting into things we shouldn’t.”
Protective strategies
If so, what strategies do you follow to protect yourself? “We ourselves take care of our protection, we have a safe house where we can take refuge,” Calel replies.
“We assume our self-protection by joining with other organizations,” Perez adds. “We also take care to heal ourselves physically and spiritually with our methods of the Mayan worldview,” he points out.
However, the accompaniment of the international community – in this case the PBI organization – is, for the three defenders, vital. However, “many have had to leave the territory, go to the city. Some in exile. But they have to leave the children and those families are disintegrated,” Ramirez concludes.
Welcome verification
The three leaders are hopeful of Europe’s possible actions and guidelines to protect human rights defenders and environmental women. “That’s why we’ve come all this way, to ask you to send a mission to see how the broken ones no longer have water,” Calel asks.

Thelma Pérez, leader maza ch’orti, Guatemala

“They must understand that militarism in Guatemala is not only to control territories, but to abuse the bodies of indigenous women,” Pérez denounces.
“We would like you to understand what it means that 60 percent of our ancestral territory has been granted, that they understand that women’s struggle is stronger, because we carry not only community work, but with the defense of our families and the territory. If we are killed or exiled, who stays in charge of the children?” concludes Ramirez.

Original source in Spanish

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