Category Archives: Americas

Berta Cáceres murder: seven convicted men sentenced to up to 54 years

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Sentencing in environmental activist’s death comes more than a year after guilty verdict

The seven men found guilty of killing the Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres have been sentenced to 30 to 54 years.

Cáceres, a winner of the Goldman prize for environmental defenders, was shot dead late at night on 2 March 2016 – two days before her 45th birthday – after a long battle to stop construction of an internationally financed hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River.

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Death toll rises to 21 after attack on Mexican town

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Suspected cartel members shot at Villa Unión’s mayor’s office before being chased by police

Security forces have shot dead seven more suspected cartel gunmen after a weekend attack on a northern Mexican town, according to authorities, bringing the death toll to 21 and adding fuel to a debate about whether the gangs should be deemed terrorists.

The government of Coahuila state said 10 gunmen and four police were killed in shootouts on Saturday in Villa Unión, days after Donald Trump fanned bilateral tensions by saying he would designate cartels as terrorists.

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Global heating driving spread of mosquito-borne dengue fever

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Record numbers across Asia and Americas infected as rising temperatures extend disease to places once seen as safe

Rising temperatures across Asia and the Americas have contributed to multiple severe outbreaks of dengue fever globally over the past six months, making 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390 million infections each year.

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Suriname president guilty of murder over 1982 executions

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Desi Bouterse found guilty by military court over abduction and murder of 15 government critics in wake of coup

A court in Suriname has convicted the country’s president, Desi Bouterse, of murder for the execution of 15 opponents in 1982 following a coup. The man who has dominated the former Dutch colony’s recent history was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Opposition parties called for the resignation of Bouterse, who was in China on an official visit when the sentence was handed down on Friday.

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Keiko Fujimori: Peru opposition leader walks free from jail

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Rightwing leader imprisoned for more than a year pending corruption trial says release corrects a ‘process full of abuse and arbitrariness’

The Peruvian opposition leader Keiko Fujimori has walked free after being jailed for more than a year pending a trial over allegations she accepted illegal campaign contributions from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.

Fujimori, leader of the powerful rightwing Popular Force party, left prison in the Chorrillos district of the capital, Lima, according to a Reuters witness at the scene, where hundreds of supporters gathered outside in anticipation of her release.

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Brazil’s president claims DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires

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Jair Bolsonaro falsely accuses actor of funding deliberate destruction of rainforest

Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest.

Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s a cool guy, isn’t he? Giving money for the Amazon to be torched.”

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Brad Gobright, renowned US rock climber, dies after fall in Mexico

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The American was abseiling in El Potrero Chico near Monterrey when he plunged about 300m to his death

One of the world’s most renowned rock climbers, the American Brad Gobright, has died after falling off a mountain in Mexico.

The fall occurred on Wednesday on an almost sheer face known as El Sendero Luminoso on the El Toro mountain in the El Portrero Chico area near the northern city of Monterrey, civil defense officials said.

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The Guardian view on China, Hong Kong and Xinjiang: will the truth hurt? | Editorial

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It has been a bad week for Beijing, with new support for pro-democracy protesters and detailed evidence of the repression in the north-western region

Beijing was never going to welcome the news that the US had passed a law backing pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. But its anger today at Donald Trump’s signing of a bill it condemns as “full of prejudice and arrogance” perhaps had extra bite. This was its third blow in a week. On Monday, leaders woke up to a pro-democracy landslide in Hong Kong’s local elections, and the publication of leaked documents exposing the workings of internment camps in Xinjiang, where at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims are believed to be detained.

China’s bullishness has already been challenged by the trade war and slowing economic growth, now at a 27-year low. Mr Trump has previously made it clear that he regards Hong Kong’s protesters as leverage, and has shown he does not want this law to hinder a trade deal that both sides need and appear to be close to agreeing. China is hoping he will not implement the law, which enables sanctions on individuals and the revocation of the region’s special trade status if annual reviews find that it has not retained sufficient autonomy.

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Trump plan to label Mexico cartels as terror groups defies logic, experts say

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Analysts say designation would be largely cosmetic as the already illegitimate groups are driven by money, not politics

Mexican drug cartel thugs have hanged bodies from bridges, set fire to crowded buildings and tossed hand grenades into crowds.

But Donald Trump’s decision to designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs) has been questioned by experts, who argue that the move’s main impact would be cosmetic – although it might provide a pretext for possible US military incursions.

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Police raid office of Brazil NGO linked to brigade that helped battle Amazon fires

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Raid and arrests of four volunteer firefighters were a politically-motivated attack, indigenous associations and campaigners say

The headquarters of an award-winning Brazilian NGO which works with remote communities in the Amazon has been raided by police, who also arrested four volunteer firefighters and accused them of starting wildfires to raise international funding.

At dawn on Tuesday, heavily armed police raided the offices of the Health and Happiness Project, (known by its Portuguese initials as PSA) in Alter do Chão in the Amazon state of Pará, seizing computers and documents.

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Is Bolivia turning into a rightwing military dictatorship? | Nick Estes

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Events in Bolivia – including the killing of indigenous protesters – contain echoes from Bolivia’s past dictatorships

Indian massacres have returned to Bolivia. There is a history — a blood feud, to be precise — behind this tragedy. The self-declared “presidency” of Jeanine Áñez has revived the old oligarchy’s race hatred and the barbaric practice of Indian killing, the collective punishment of the nation’s Indigenous majority for daring to defy a centuries-old racial order of apartheid and oppression. Since the ousting of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president Evo Morales, security forces have carried out at least two massacres of Indigenous people protesting the military coup.

Only two weeks since seizing state power, the evidence is clear: this is a rightwing, military dictatorship. The telltale sign for a country like Bolivia is the outright Indian killing.

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Canada rail workers stage huge strike over fatigue and safety concerns

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3,200 Canadian National workers walked out last week, paralyzing freight traffic and prompting fears of a heating gas shortage

Canada’s largest rail strike in more than a decade has paralyzed much of the nation’s freight traffic and prompted fears of a heating gas shortage as winter sets in.

Nearly 3,200 workers at Canadian National, the country’s largest rail operator, walked off the job on 19 November, to protest against chronic overwork and unsafe conditions.

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Catholic priests in Argentina sentenced to 45 years for child abuse

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Court convicts two priests and former gardener at school for deaf students on counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors

A court in Argentina has convicted two Roman Catholic priests and the former gardener of a church-run school for deaf students on 28 counts of sexual abuse and corruption of minors, in a case that has shaken the church in Pope Francis’s homeland.

A three-judge panel in the city of Mendoza sentenced Nicola Corradi to 42 years and Horacio Corbacho to 45 years for abusing children at the Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired Children in Lujan de Cuyo, a municipality in north-western Argentina.

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Evo Morales ‘refused to stand in elections due to ethnic conflict fears’

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Ousted Bolivian president says he renounced his candidacy ‘in the name of peace’

Bolivia’s ousted and exiled president, Evo Morales, says he has ruled out standing in his country’s next elections to stop the existing crisis sliding into a broader civil or ethnic conflict.

He told the Guardian: “This is what I am afraid of and it is what we have to avoid, which is why I am renouncing my candidacy. In the name of peace, sacrifices have to be made and I am sacrificing my candidacy even though I have every right to it.”

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New Bolivian interior minister vows to jail Evo Morales for rest of his life

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Rightwing government claims former president is guilty of terrorism and sedition

The interior minister of Bolivia’s rightwing interim government has vowed to jail the former president Evo Morales for the rest of his life, accusing the exiled leftist of inciting anti-government protests that he claimed amounted to terrorism.

In an interview with the Guardian, Arturo Murillo claimed that Morales had been orchestrating efforts to “strangle” Bolivian cities by ordering followers to erect roadblocks that would starve its residents of fuel and food.

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‘Bring him back’: Morales loyalists block Bolivia’s roads to pile on pressure

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Followers of the exiled ex-president hope their blockade of food and fuel will bring concessions from the new rightwing government

The barricades blocking the road to Alto Lipari are fashioned from every conceivable object: telegraph poles and tree trunks, wheelie bins and wooden crates, a bed frame and even a shipping container daubed with insults aimed at Bolivia’s “sell-out” police. Their message is unambiguous. “Evo de nuevo” reads a demand written on to the ground at the blockaded entrance to this rural farming community an hour’s drive south of La Paz. “Bring Evo back.”

A 20-minute hike further on, a group of Evo Morales loyalists, armed with sticks of dynamite used to deter unwanted visitors, keep watch from a mountainside observation point.

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Windrush victim forced to sleep in London bin shed

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Roy Harrison, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged six, fighting deportation notice

A man caught in the Windrush scandal has resorted to sleeping in a freezing bin shed because the Home Office has not regularised his status and is trying to deport him.

Roy Harrison, 44, arrived in the UK as a six-year-old. He had been abandoned as a newborn in Jamaica by his mother and left on his grandmother’s doorstep.

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Three Colombian police killed in bomb blast as Bogotá protests flare again

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Fatal explosion at police station in south-west also injured 10 officers amid 9pm curfew in capital

Three police were killed in a bomb blast at a police station in Colombia after thousands gathered for renewed protests and sporadic looting erupted in the capital, Bogotá.

A police source said 10 officers were also injured in the explosion late on Friday in the town of Santander de Quilichao, in the south-western province of Cauca, known as a hot spot for drug trafficking and violence.

The source did not attribute the bombing to a particular armed group. Police are expected to hold a news conference on Saturday morning.

The blast came after demonstrations flared again in several parts of Bogotá a day after mass marches ended in three deaths.

After more than 250,000 people marched on Thursday to express growing discontent with president Iván Duque’s government, another large crowd gathered on Friday afternoon in Bogotá’s Bolívar Plaza.

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El Salvador: a country ruled by gangs – a photo essay

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There are few places on earth as dangerous as El Salvador, a country with a population of just 6.5 million people – yet 10% are involved with gangs

El Salvador is no stranger to violence. It endured a brutal civil war in the 1980s, which lasted for more than a decade. In many ways this history has underpinned the evolution of a terrifying gang culture where extortion and murder have become the norm. In the aftermath of the civil war, US immigration policies hardened. The net result was Salvadorian migrants convicted of crimes were deported back to El Salvador, renewing the cycle of gang culture and undermining the foundations of a fragile and struggling state.

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Colombia: violence erupts in Bogotá after anti-government protests – video

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Violent clashes broke out in Bogotá's storied Bolívar Square on Thursday with police using thick clouds of teargas and water cannon to disperse protesters amassed there. People fleeing the scene were visibly affected by clouds of noxious gas. Earlier in the day, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across the country to demand the government maintain the minimum wage for young people and the universal right to a pension, even though the authorities have repeatedly denied they are considering those changes

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