A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia
Continue reading...Category Archives: Americas
Ben Jennings on Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid pandemic in Brazil– cartoon
Trudeau makes global vaccine pledge but how committed is Canada?
Promise to donate 100m doses highlights questions about Canada’s seriousness in helping poorer countries vaccinate
Canada has secured enough potential coronavirus vaccines to fully protect every resident nearly seven times over, even as a global shortage has forced poorer nations to wait.
After initial hiccups with its vaccination plan, more than 65% of Canadians have now received at least one dose, edging ahead of early leaders Israel and the UK, and on Friday, Justin Trudeau said 68m doses will have arrived in Canada by the end of July.
Continue reading...Peru: Fujimori cries electoral fraud – and unleashes torrent of racism
Claims of rightwing candidate, trailing Pedro Castillo in the polls, emboldens far right, who have vowed not to accept result
The prospect of the son of illiterate Andean peasants becoming president as his rival cries fraud has shaken Peru’s entrenched class system and its fragile democracy, letting loose a torrent of racism in the bicentennial year of the country’s independence.
With 100% of the official vote counted, leftist Pedro Castillo had 50.12% – and advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival Keiko Fujimori. But Fujimori has claimed fraud, challenging about 500,000 votes, calling for half to be annulled, and obliging officials at Peru’s electoral board to reexamine ballots – despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.
Continue reading...Fresh protests in Brazil against Bolsonaro’s handling of Covid pandemic
Country’s death toll nears 500,000 as opposition to the president grows and vaccination rates remain low
Thousands of Brazilians returned to the streets on Saturday in protest against the response of Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to a pandemic that has killed close on half a million people in the country – the most after the United States.
On the second day of demonstrations in less than a month, the anti-Bolsonaro mobilisation is gaining momentum amid an ascendant curve of Covid-19 infections, while only 11% of 212 million Brazilians have been fully vaccinated, according to local media.
Continue reading...Racist school course sparks outrage as Canada reckons with colonial legacy
Course in Nova Scotia asked racist questions about residential schools, which forced the assimilation of Indigenous children
A series of racist questions in a high school English course sparked outrage among parents and students and highlighted persistent shortcomings in how Canada teaches the grim legacy of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous peoples.
Students taking a grade 10 correspondence course in the province of Nova Scotia were asked to list the benefits and disadvantages of being placed in one of the country’s notorious residential schools, where 150,000 Indigenous children were sent as part of a campaign of forced assimilation.
Continue reading...Briton tells how she beat crocodile on snout to save twin in Mexico lagoon
Georgia Laurie gives interview about attack that left her sister Melissa recovering in hospital
A British woman has described beating a crocodile on its snout while it grabbed her other hand as she fought to save her twin sister from the reptile.
Georgia Laurie, 28, said she feared her sister, Melissa, was dead when she saw the crocodile drag her underwater after they went for a swim in a lagoon in Mexico.
Continue reading...One in a Thousand review – Argentinian teen’s hoop dreams, hanging out and hoping
Clarisa Navas’s film is a confident, visually engaging romance conjuring a world of teenage waiting and wanting
This is an LGBT urban pastoral from film-maker Clarisa Navas, set in a tough barrio in Corrientes province, north-eastern Argentina. Sofia Cabrera plays Iris, a teenage girl who appears to have been excluded from school – although that doesn’t make her lifestyle any more obviously aimless than all the people she’s hanging out with. Iris is obsessed with basketball and spends most of her days loafing around, shooting hoops, talking with her brother and cousins, and chatting with the neighbourhood kids, gay and straight. Then she chances across a charismatic older woman called Renata (Ana Carolina García), who has an elegantly wasted image; Renata has mysteriously been abroad for a while and apparently dances at a local club called Traumatic, where she appears to be on the fringe of sex work. Some are saying that she has HIV – although this may simply be spite. Iris and Renata are drawn to each other and soon they are in love.
Continue reading...Why brutal protests have been sweeping across Colombia – video explainer
From the Amazon to the Caribbean coast, several weeks of protests have swept Colombia – dozens have died as demonstrators have faced sometimes deadly retaliation from police.
The catalyst was a proposed tax hike, since withdrawn, in response to the coronavirus crisis. Demands expanded to calls to end inequality, economic disparity and police violence in Colombia – in almost two months, demonstrations have caused food and goods shortages.
Protest leaders have temporarily suspended in-person demonstrations due to a rise in Covid cases, but Joe Parkin Daniels, reporting for the Guardian, explains why this widespread discontent is unlikely to end
Pride month in Guatemala marred by killings of three LGBTQ+ people
Celebrations become ‘month of mourning’ after three murders in a week, with calls for urgent state reform
Guatemala’s LGBTQ+ community is in mourning after two transgender women and a gay man were murdered in less than a week during pride month.
Andrea González, a prominent activist and leader in the transgender women’s organisation Otrans Reinas de la Noche (Queens of the Night) was shot dead on 11 June in the street near her home in Guatemala City. Her murder followed the killing of another Otrans member, Cecy Ixpatá, who was assaulted and died from her injuries on 9 June in a hospital in Salamá, about 50 miles north of Guatemala City. José Manuel Vargas Villeda, a 22-year-old gay man was also shot and killed on 14 June in Morales, 150 miles north-east of the capital.
Continue reading...A silent decimation: South America’s losing battle against Covid
Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths
The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.
As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.
Continue reading...Two journalists killed in Mexico, meaning three dead so far this year
Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera shot dead Thursday, and Enrique Garcia killed Wednesday, apparently during work as ride-hail driver
Prosecutors in southern Mexico said reporter Gustavo Sánchez Cabrera was shot to death Thursday, and another journalist was killed just west of Mexico City, bring to three the number killed so far this year in the country. Two other reporters have disappeared.
The prosecutor’s office in the southern state of Oaxaca said Sánchez Cabrera was riding a motorcycle with another person on a rural road when gunmen opened fire on them.
Continue reading...Trudeau is no feminist, says Green party leader as she battles party revolt
Canada’s first black party leader denounces ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’ efforts to oust her after Green MP defected to Trudeau’s Liberals
Justin Trudeau is “no ally and no feminist”, the head of Canada’s Green party has alleged, as she denounced a “sexist” and “racist” campaign to oust her as party leader ahead of a looming federal election.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Annamie Paul said efforts to remove her were being led by a handful of Green party veterans “who are on their way out” and didn’t reflect the majority who elected her as leader in October.
Continue reading...‘Gamechanging’ £10m environmental DNA project to map life in world’s rivers
eBioAtlas programme aims to identify fish, birds, amphibians and land animals in freshwater systems from the Ganges to the Mekong
Concealed by the turbid, swirling waters of the Amazon, the Mekong and the Congo, the biodiversity of the world’s great rivers has largely remained a mystery to scientists. But now a multimillion-pound project aims to describe and identify the web of life in major freshwater ecosystems around the world with “gamechanging” DNA technology.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UK-based environmental DNA (eDNA) specialists NatureMetrics have launched a partnership to take thousands of water samples from freshwater river systems like the Ganges and the Niger delta to identify the fish, birds, amphibians and land animals that live in and around them.
Continue reading...White couple who got vaccines meant for First Nation are fined but not jailed
White River First Nation had sought six months in jail for Canadian millionaires Rodney and Ekaterina Baker
The millionaire Canadian couple who chartered a private plane to a remote community and jumped the coronavirus vaccine queue to receive doses intended for elderly Indigenous people have been fined C$2,300 but were not sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to breaking public health rules.
The size of the fine imposed on the former casino executive Rodney Baker and his wife, the actor Ekaterina Baker, on Wednesday prompted frustration amid members of the White River First Nation, many of whom wanted the couple to face stiffer repercussions.
Continue reading...Indigenous Canadians win right to use original names after forced assimilation
Government seeks to atone for historical abuses as new policy comes after discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves
Indigenous people in Canada who were forced to use European names on official documents can now apply to restore their original names, in a new policy unveiled as the country’s government seeks to atone for historical abuses.
“For far too long, Canada’s colonial legacy has disrupted Indigenous peoples’ Indigenous naming practices and family connections from being recognized,” Marc Miller, minister of Indigenous services, said in a statement, adding that the new policy would allow residents to reclaim “the dignity of their Indigenous names”.
Continue reading...‘It’s not easy’: seven working parents around the world – photo essay
Photographers Linda Bournane Engelberth and Valentina Sinis document the lives of working parents from Botswana to the UK for Unicef
If investing in family-friendly policies is good for business, then many companies are missing a trick. Giving parents and families adequate time, resources and services to care for children, while staying in their jobs and improving their skills and productivity, pays off according to employers. But for many, in all parts of the world, paid parental leave and childcare are not a reality. And that can compromise the first critical years of life – a time when the combination of the right nourishment, environment and love can strengthen a developing brain and give a baby the best start.
Evidence suggests family-friendly policies pay off in healthier, better-educated children and greater gender equality, and are linked to better productivity and the ability to attract and retain workers. Momentum for change is growing with an increasing number of businesses beginning to see the value.
Continue reading...Peruvians re-weave Incan hanging bridge spanning river – video
Peruvians from the Huinchiri community in Cusco region are rebuilding a 500-year-old Incan hanging bridge using traditional weaving techniques. The Q’eswachaka bridge crosses the Apurimac river, connecting communities, but fell into disrepair during the Covid pandemic and collapsed in March. Now, the bridge is being rebuilt by teams of workers across both sides of the ravine who carefully balance on main ropes while weaving
Continue reading...Home Office abandons plans to deport Osime Brown to Jamaica
Family celebrate success of campaign to halt deportation of 22-year-old, who has autism
A 22-year-old man who has autism and his family are celebrating after the Home Office abandoned plans to deport him to Jamaica.
Osime Brown, who left Jamaica aged four to settle in the UK with his mother, Joan Martin, was facing deportation after being released from prison where he had been serving a sentence for stealing a friend’s mobile phone, though he and others said he did not do it.
Continue reading...Thousands of women and children flee Haiti gang violence, Unicef says
• UN agency says 8,500 abandon homes in Port-au-Prince
• Families ‘caught in crossfire’ sleeping on concrete floors
Escalating gang violence has pushed nearly 8,500 women and children from their homes in Haiti’s capital in the past two weeks, according to Unicef.
Officials say the gangs’ fight over territory in Port-au-Prince has forced hundreds of families to abandon burned or ransacked homes in impoverished communities, with many of them staying in gymnasiums and other temporary shelters that are running out of water, food and items like blankets and clothes.
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