On February 14, the Norwegian government gave the green light to a new copper mining project that will cause two million tons of heavy metal waste to be dumped in Repparfjord, in Finnmark province (above the polar Arctic Circle), a fjord protected to preserve its salmon population. The decision has been met with utmost rejection and will be appealed. The…
The mobilizations began on February 7 with the Haitian population fed up with the corruption of Jovenel Moïse’s government and the high cost of living. The protesters demand the resignation of the president and his prime minister, an immediate national dialogue to establish a transitional government, and a call for a Constituent Assembly. They also demand the prosecution of those…
On January 24, Brazil suffered once again an environmental crime. In Brumadinho, a town in Minas Gerais state, a toxic waste reservoir of the mining company Vale burst and the mud covered the ground and people. We have seen the pictures on social networks of how the mud swept Brumadinho. Two weeks later, the figures of this massacre are: 150…
EPM, the public utility service company of Medellin in charge of the construction of Hidroituango, the hydroelectric project in Ituango, municipality of Antioquia, on February 5 closed some gates of the dam, disrupting the bed of the Cauca river and affecting its flow for four days, killing thousands of fish. The Cauca River runs through about 180 municipalities in the…
The National summit on the human right to water was held in Nigeria from 29-30 January 2019, to share community fights against the corporate control of water, resisting privatization and to ensure universal access to water in Africa and around the world. Environmental Rights Action (ERA) - Friends of the Earth Nigeria co-organised the event in the Nigerian capital, Abuja,…
On January 10, the Honduran Public Prosecutor´s Office requested a life sentence for the murder of environmental defender Berta Cáceres against the 7 people accused of the crime, and 13 years in jail for the attempted murder of Gustavo Castro, member of Otros Mundos Chiapas – Friends of the Earth Mexico. “The sentence will be made known in the verdict,…
Stefan Borghardt is a German photojournalist who came to Neuquen to report about fracking in Argentina and particularly to photograph the development of the Vaca Muerta megaproject. On January 7th he was arrested by the police while he was taking photographs of the activities at the oil waste management plant Treater, in Añelo city, and the pollution caused by this…
The murder of Maritza Quiroz, leader of the Santa Marta Victims Roundtable, on January 6th, was the sixth political murder that took place in the first week of 2019. The crimes against Colombian territory defenders continue unabated and are a cause of concern for social organizations throughout the country that defend the Peace Agreements signed in 2016 between the Revolutionary…
In an abbreviated procedure, which lasted two weeks, on December 14 lonko Facundo Jones Huala, a Mapuche authority of the Pu Lof from Cushamen, was convicted by the Chilean justice system for the crimes of arson and illegal possession of a firearm. A week later, Judge Francisco Olate of the Public Oral Court of Valdivia announced the sentence to 9…
The Council of Wuxhtaj Peoples and the Council of the Mayan People (CPO), which are part of the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Latin America (MAR), denounced the murder on December 16th of the brothers Nery Esteban Pedro and Domingo Esteban Pedro, from the Bella Linda community, a microregion of Ixquisis (municipality of San Mateo Ixtatán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala).…
