Copy
Share
Tweet
Forward
Rights Action
January 10, 2019
*******
 
2019: A year for good living –buen vivir-, including on-going struggle for local-to-global justice and equality, and respect for Mother Earth
 
Dear friends and supporters,
 
Thank-you very much for your 2018 donations, your trust in our work, and your own local-to-global education and activism.  Rights Action remains a small, tightly run organization, ready for another year of work and activism, and of direct support for numerous community / human rights / environmental defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala.
Early in 2019, Rights Action distributed $15,000 in scholarship funds for primary school-through-university education of Mayan community defenders and their children – 10 individual grants; 1 primary school grant.  As our grassroots partner groups struggle today in defense of community, human rights and Mother Earth, Rights Action sends small scholarship grants for the education of the future generations.
 

Connecting the local-to-global dots:
“International community” pouring fuel on the Honduran and Guatemalan fires

  
(“Free trade” agreements, past and present) 

Even as the U.S. government militarizes its border with Mexico, systematically violating the rights of, and directly attacking refugee claimants fleeing government corruption and repression, exploitation and destitution in Guatemala and Honduras, the U.S., Canadian and certain E.U. governments, the World Bank and numerous global companies (mining, hydroelectric dams, food-for-export production, tourism, garment ‘sweatshop’ production, etc.) maintain mutually beneficial relations with the regimes and elites in Guatemala and Honduras.
 
The so-called “international community” is directly throwing fuel on the fires causing so many people to flee into exile, every year.
 

(Mining industry, in Honduras and Guatemala)
 
Early January 2019: The Guatemalan regime is once again trying to illegally shut down CICIG, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.  Since 2008, CICIG and the Attorney General’s office have been at the forefront of courageous legal investigations into, and trials against (formerly U.S.-backed) war criminals and organized crime rings (including drug trafficking) that are operating within the institutions of the corrupted State and successive governments.  Surprising no one, this current attack against CICIG began days before an AG-CICIG led criminal trial was to begin against the brother and son of President Jimmy Morales himself for public sector embezzlement of funds.
 
Next door: The regime in Honduras remains entrenched in power, keeping political prisoners illegally in jail, refusing to investigate 100s of political killings since the 2009 military coup, including a new wave of government killings since the violent, fraudulently stolen elections of November 2017.  All this as the regime further privatizes and opens the country’s resources to global companies and investors, while many government, police and  military officials – including members of President Juan Orlando Hernandez’ own family - are deeply implicated in organized crime, including drug-trafficking into the U.S. and stealing public funds.
 
From the U.S. and Canada, a deafening silence continues from our governments and most media concerning how our governments and private sectors are, in many ways, helping cause the endemic government corruption, repression and impunity, poverty and destitution, forcing 10s of 1000s to flee into exile every year.
 
*******
 

Would that there were more music schools than military in the streets,
more guitars than machine guns, more artists than assassins.
 
 
It is in this deeply intertwined local-to-global context that Rights Action works.  While directly supporting numerous community / Mother Earth / human rights defense struggles, we carry out education and activism work, trying to expose and hold to account the U.S. and Canadian governments and companies for how their political, military and economic relations directly empower and ‘legitimize’ the regimes in power that are responsible for the government corruption, repression and impunity, and widespread poverty and destitution.
 
Thank-you and carry it on
Grahame Russell
grahame@rightsaction.org
 
*******

Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)
To support our community partner groups in Guatemala and Honduras, resisting the multiple violences of their “international community” supported governments, and to support refugees and forced migrants, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
  • U.S.:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
  • Canada:  (Box 552) 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
Credit-Card Donations: http://rightsaction.org/donate/
Donations of stock? Write to: info@rightsaction.org
(Contributions can be made anonymously)
 
*******
Follow the work of other solidarity/ NGO groups in the U.S. and Canada
*******
Please re-post and publish this information
Rights Action: info@rightsaction.org
Subscribe to e-Newsletter: www.rightsaction.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RightsAction.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RightsAction, @RightsAction
*******
 
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Copyright © 2019 Rights Action, All rights reserved.


unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp