Latest news with #derechosHumanos
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Ecuador apologizes to farm workers deemed to live like slaves
Ecuador's government apologized Saturday to some 300 people who worked as farmers for a Japanese textile firm in conditions which a court likened to modern-day slavery. These people worked on plantations that produced abaca, a fiber used in textiles and the auto industry. As of 2021, Furukawa's plantations for abaca covered almost 23,000 hectares spread over three provinces on the Pacific coast, where the majority of the population is Black. Some workers gave birth to children in unsanitary and overcrowded camps, while others were denied proper medical attention after work-related injuries, according to testimony given at a news conference in Quito back in December. That month the Constitutional Court ordered Furukawa to pay $120,000 to each of 342 victims -- a total of around $41 million. The company was also ordered to make a public apology to them. It has not complied with either order. The court said that over the course of five years Furukawa had people living in conditions of modern-day slavery in its abaca fields. It also ordered the government to apologize to the workers, and that is what happened Saturday. The company violated "national and international regulations that affected, in essence, human dignity," Labor Minister Ivonne Nunez said. She said "the state, through the various ministries, as the sentence explains, turned a deaf ear" to the plight of the abused workers. Nunez spoke at a ceremony with other government ministers at Quito's Independence Plaza, as ex-Furukawa workers chanted slogans such as "reparations, reparations" and "modern slavery, never again." After the court ruling, Furukawa said it does not have the money to pay the damages ordered by the tribunal and called them disproportionate. Back in December, at a meeting at a human rights group's headquarters, plantation workers told horror stories of their lives raising abaca. "We have been confronting the monster that is Furukawa," Segundo Ordonez, a 59-year-old farmer, said at the meeting. pld/dg/dw/mlm Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Guatemala jails ex-paramilitaries for 40 years over rapes during civil war
A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation's civil war. The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing. Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said. 'The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,' she said, praising the women's bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions. 'They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,' the judge said. Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was 'historic' because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades. Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter. One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was 'very happy' with the verdict. Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, 'I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.' But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women's testimony against the suspects. The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women's case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison. Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case 'highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women' during the civil conflict. In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q'eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Guatemala jails ex-paramilitaries for 40 years over rapes during civil war
A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation's civil war. The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing. Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said. 'The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,' she said, praising the women's bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions. 'They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,' the judge said. Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was 'historic' because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades. Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter. One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was 'very happy' with the verdict. Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, 'I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.' But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women's testimony against the suspects. The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women's case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison. Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case 'highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women' during the civil conflict. In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q'eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.
New York Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Prominent Anti-Corruption Lawyer Is Arrested in El Salvador
A prominent Salvadoran lawyer known for publicly accusing President Nayib Bukele's government of corruption and malfeasance was detained by the authorities on Sunday night, according to the lawyer's employer, a human rights organization. Ruth López, who leads the organization's anti-corruption and justice unit, had not been formally charged as of Monday and her location was unknown, according to a statement from the group. The arrest was confirmed by the country's attorney general's office, which in an online post said the 'administrative detention' of Ms. López was linked to her previous work as the 'right hand' of a magistrate and former government official, Eugenio Chicas. Mr. Chicas, a former president of El Salvador's supreme electoral tribunal who also served as a press secretary to former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, was arrested in February on charges of illicit enrichment. 'Ruth López collaborated in the theft of funds from state coffers,' the attorney general's office said in its post. Ms. López's arrest prompted immediate outcry within and outside El Salvador from human rights groups and experts. They said that Mr. Bukele, emboldened by his relationship with President Trump since agreeing to imprison migrants deported from the United States, had stepped up attacks on his critics. 'For years, Ruth López has courageously exposed corruption and human rights violations in El Salvador,' Juanita Goebertus, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. 'Her arrest is not an isolated incident — it marks a dangerous escalation in President Bukele's effort to silence dissent.' Since 2022, Mr. Bukele has kept in place a state of emergency that allows authorities to carry out arrests at will, sidestepping due process. Initially imposed to crack down on gang violence, the state of emergency has led to a dramatic reduction in crime but has also resulted at least 80,000 people being detained and placed in El Salvador's notorious prison system. Ms. López's organization, Cristosal, has emerged as a major force in exposing abuses in the prison system and beyond. The group has repeatedly accused the Bukele administration of holding people in pretrial detention without access to lawyers or their families, in a condition that the group's director, Noah Bullock, has said amounts to forced disappearance. Cristosal said that Ms. López had now fallen victim to that crime, which it described as 'a serious human rights violation under international law.' Ms. López has been at the forefront of investigations into potential corruption or negligence by the Bukele government. One inquiry is related to the misuse of pandemic funds and another is tied to the contamination of the local water supply caused by the construction of the country's mega prison known as CECOT. Another denounced the use of public funds to pay for Pegasus software used to spy on journalists and human rights groups in El Salvador. 'The link with Chicas in Ruth's case is fabricated — a dubious pretext to imprison her arbitrarily,' said Napoleón Campos, a Salvadoran political analyst. Mr. Campos said the arrest should instead be viewed in the context of 'human rights abuses, the harassment of environmental defenders and the broader attack by the Bukele regime on civil society.' This month, several journalists with the Salvadoran independent investigative news outlet El Faro fled El Salvador after learning that the government was preparing warrants for their arrests. The outlet said such a move would amount to 'the most frontal state assault on press freedom in El Salvador since Bukele came to office in 2019.' El Faro has for years investigated the Bukele administration and its supposed negotiations with the country's gang leaders and has said its journalists were placed under surveillance and intimidated as a result. A spokeswoman for the presidency, Wendy Ramos, did not respond questions about what grounds the government had for seeking the arrest of Ms. López or the El Faro journalists. The Salvadoran government has consistently dismissed critiques of Mr. Bukele and his security policies as efforts by members of the political opposition to tarnish the president. Mr. Bukele's approval ratings have consistently remained above 80 percent in public opinion surveys. Mr. Bullock, Cristosal's director, has cast doubt on the high ratings, saying that in the face of mass arrests, the Salvadoran public has grown fearful of expressing discontent with the president and his iron-fisted approach.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Yahoo
Mothers of Mexico's disappeared hold a candle vigil in Mexico City on eve of Mother's Day
Demonstrators paid tribute to the mothers who have died not knowing what happened to their missing children. Mexico has struggled with a plague of disappearances for decades and the official count now exceeds 127,000
