An Update from the Global Connections Team
Last January, WES Global Connections partner Antonio Pacheco, director of the Salvadoran humanitarian organization, ADES was arrested along with 5 other environmentalists and put in prison for an undermined amount of time. The judge in the case placed a gag-order on the case, refused to let family members visit, and rejected all appeals. The men sleep on pieces of cardboard on a concrete floor and are denied medications. The regime of President Nayib Bukele appears to be seeking a way to overturn the historic ban on metallic mining in El Salvador. All of the arrested men were active in getting mining out of El Salvador and were instrumental in getting the 2017 anti-mining law passed.
Since then, WES members participated in two support actions at the Salvadoran Embassy, here in D.C. Our friend and El Rodeo resident, Vidalina Morales, now acting President of ADES, will return to D.C. in October to press for the release of the 5 “Water Defenders”. WES/Global Connections will send a representative to accompany Vidalina back to El Salvador, as part of an international fact-finding delegation and help publicize the case “in-country.”
Following is a current summary of where the case stands and international efforts to free the 5 community leaders. It is from the environmental newsletter, Mongabay:
“The arrest of five environmental activists fighting water pollution and mining in El Salvador is drawing international criticism following questionable developments in court proceedings that suggest the case against them is politically motivated.
The activists were arrested in January in connection to an alleged 1989 kidnapping and murder during the country’s civil war. But a lack of evidence in the case has led to calls for their release and a closer look at the steps the government is taking to renew a defunct mining sector.
“We are concerned these arrests are politically motivated and intended to silence the overwhelming opposition to mining in the country. We also have concerns that these men have been denied their basic right to due process,” 17 U.S. members of Congress said in a letter earlier this month.
Known locally as “water defenders,” the five men helped lead a campaign to ban metals mining in 2017 and protect El Salvador’s primary source of clean water, the Lempa River Basin. The countrywide ban was the first of its kind anywhere in the world and was celebrated as a landmark step for environmental policy.But in recent years, President Nayib Bukele’s government has taken some steps that suggest it’s reconsidering its position on mining. It created a government agency to regulate the energy and mining industries and joined an intergovernmental forum that helps “advance best practices” for the mining sector.”
READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN MONGABAY
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