Guatemala
[WHRD Alert] GUATEMALA / Adela Choc Cuz, ancestral authority and rights defender, is criminalized, physically attacked, and expelled from her community due to her work as a spiritual guide and defender of land and territory.
In the early morning hours of May 16, 2022, the ancestral authority and human rights defender Adela Choc Cruz was illegally detained along with her daughter, denied the consumption of food and water, and held prisoner until she was finally released just before daybreak on May 17, 2022. The spiritual guide who resides in the […]
[Urgent Alert] GUATEMALA / Government imposes state of siege in El Estor after repressing peaceful protest against illegal mining operation.
On Sunday October 24th, after two days of brutal repression by the National Civilian Police (PNC, Spanish initials) and Army against the Q’eqchi’ people peacefully opposing the illegal operation of the Swiss–Russian Solway Mining Company, the Guatemalan government decreed a state of siege in the town of El Estor, Izabal. That same Sunday, the police […]
[WHRD Alert] GUATEMALA / Maya K´iche´ leader Sebastiana Pablo Hernández criminalized for defending human rights and held in preventive detention since October 2020.
Sebastiana Pablo Hernández de Lorenzo Activity Defense of human rights Sebastiana Pablo Hernández de Lorenzo criminalized for the felony offenses of aggravated robbery, aggravated arson, and sedition with no legal or evidential basis whatsoever. After spending 10 months of preventive detention in the Women’s Detention Center in the city of Quetzaltenango in conditions of confinement […]
[Urgent Alert] GUATEMALA / Judge orders trial to begin on November 8, 2021, for María Cuc Choc, criminalized since 2018 for defense of the land
Last Tuesday, August 3rd, after an evidentiary hearing, the judge of the First instance Criminal, Drug and Environmental Court in Izabal decreed the beginning of the trial, next November 8th, of defender María Magadalena Cuc Choc, who has been facing criminalization for defending the land since 2018. On January 18, 2018, María Cuc Choc was […]
[WHRD Alert] GUATEMALA / Communications consultant fired from government office for waging campaign against violence against women.
María Alejandra Morales Activity Women human rights defender THE FACTS – Recently, the Guatemalan government has unilaterally and arbitrarily terminated the employment contract of defender María Alejandra Morales in the National Civil Service Office, where she worked as a communications consultant. Her dismissal took place after she promoted the I Am Afraid Campaign, aimed at […]