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Is Mining Money Behind the Arrest of Salvadoran Water Defenders? The five detainees include leaders of the campaign that won the world’s first metals mining ban in 2017 -- a ban the cash-strapped government may be moving to overturn.
February 27, 2023 by Inequality
By John Cavanagh
Human rights and environmental activists across the globe are mobilizing in support of five men detained in El Salvador on charges that appear aimed at silencing opposition to mining.
The arrestees — Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco, and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega — were among the leaders of a campaign to block mining activities in El Salvador that would’ve enriched a few while endangering the nation’s water supply.
In 2017, their campaign shook the rapacious global extractives industry to its core by winning the world’s first ban on metals mining. aRobin Broad and I chronicled this thrilling victory in our book, The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country From Corporate Greed But now it’s clear this David versus Goliath struggle is not over.
El Salvador’s Attorney General claims the January 11 arrests are related to an alleged murder over 30 years ago during El Salvador’s brutal civil war. These charges are beyond dubious.
As more than 250 organizations from 29 countries point out in a joint statement, the government has never bothered to prosecute members of the military responsible for dozens of civil war-era human rights violations. These include a 1981 massacre that left 30 dead and 189 disappeared in the arrestees’ community in northern El Salvador.
More:
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/is-mining-money-behind-the-arrest-of-salvadoran-water-defenders/
