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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Wed Jul 28, 2021, 11:51 PM Jul 2021

Guatemala: Stop treating indigenous human rights defenders like criminals - UN experts

GENEVA (27 July 2021) – UN rights experts* have expressed concerns over the criminalisation, violations of due process and health rights of an indigenous human rights defender in Guatemala.

"Mr. Bernardo Caal Xól has been criminalised because he, on behalf of his community, took a case all the way to the Supreme Court to try to halt the Oxec hydroelectric project," the experts said. "Sadly, this is not an isolated case; too often in Guatemala those who defend land and the environment are considered criminals."

Bernardo Caal Xól is a leader of the peaceful resistance of Cahabón, a collective of 38 Maya Q'eqchi' communities in the northern department of Alta Verapaz in northern Guatemala. In 2015, he organised peaceful opposition to the Oxec hydroelectric project, which the communities said endangered their sacred Cahabón River.

In retaliation, smear campaigns were launched in newspapers, on television and social media to discredit his work and to portray human rights defenders in a negative light, the experts said.

In November 2018, he was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison despite a lack of evidence against him and irregularities in the prosecution, the experts said. Bernardo's lawyers immediately filed an appeal following his conviction – however the hearings have been cancelled or suspended on numerous occasions, including due the decision of 69 judges from the appeals chamber to refrain from hearing the case.

More:
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?LangID=E&NewsID=27343

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Bernardo Caal Xol, tortured, and imprisoned, and Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated by an executive and his assassins, from a huge company for trying to protect the sacred river of indigenous Mayan people from being destroyed.

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