This post is a summary of a article published at Huffingtonpost.com on April,10,2012 and was written by Lisa Haugaard. The complete title is,"Leaders at the summit of the Americas: protect your human rights defenders."
Alexander Quintero campaigned for justice for the victims of Colombia`s 2001 Naya river massacre, committed by paramilitary forces. "It could have been any of us," said a sobbing defender, as she told me about Alexander`s May 2010 assassination.
Nahum Palacios Arteaga was the anchor for a tv station in Honduras. He was reporting on land conflicts, where campesinos leaders were being threatened and murdered. Hitmen killed palacios and his friend, a doctor, in March 2010.
Miguel Gonzalez Ramiro was a member of the banana workers union in Guatemala. He was killed in February 2012. He is the seventh former member of the workers union killed. Killing human rights activists or defenders, as we call them, harms not only the people, their friends and family. It aims to destroy an organizing process and derail a struggle to defend the rights of many.
Every eight days a human rights activist was killed in Colombia in 2011. Nineteen journalists have been killed in Honduras since June 2009. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also singled out Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela as especially dangerous for human rights defenders.
Who is behind the violence? Sometimes it is government agents, including police or military, in other cases, it is paramilitary groups or organized crime.
Human rights defenders and journalists in Latin America face harassment by government of all political stripes: from being jailed on baseless charges and subjected to illegal surveillance to newspaper editors who are sued by government officials.
Where there are risks, government should establish protection programs. Defenders say the most important action is investigate and prosecute the attacks against them. Latin American governments should take advantage of human rights support and monitoring provided by the UN (United Nations) and OAS (Organization of American States). It is disturbing that governments such as Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela have recently tried to limit the role of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and special rapporteur on freedom of expression.
The United States government should speak out more for defenders in the Americas. It has an absolute obligation to take action, including enforcing human rights conditions.
There is always rhetoric about democratic values at these summits. Yet real democratic values include the space for people to defend their rights on a daily basis.
