PO
Box 24009
Phoenix,
AZ 85074
Office of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria
City of Knowledge, Building 104 - Innova 104
Offices 17
Panama City, Panama
Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos
Oficina del Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos
May 6, 2019
Dear UNHCHR Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria,
We send you this urgent request for your
immediate response and action in the protection of our Indigenous sister Margot Pérez, Nahuat Pipil leader of Cuzcátlan and spokesperson for the Network of the Smiling Jaguar of Indigenous
Peoples in El Salvador. Ms.
Margot Perez is from Nahuizalco, in the western zone of El Salvador [Central
America]. She is a courageous advocate for our Indigenous Peoples and a protector of sacred elements such as lands
and rivers that we all depend upon for life.
As a defender of the Sacred Water Ways of Nahuizalco, she has been at the forefront of
the fight against the expropriation of the rivers and sources of life
sustaining water of the Indigenous Peoples, battling against the violent
imposition of hydroelectric power plants in violation of the right of
Indigenous Peoples to Free, Prior, and
Informed Consent.
On May 3rd, 2019 Margot’s brother-in-law Jose Alfredo Hernandez was assassinated
in Nahuizalco. Due to the violence,
persecution and lack of protection for herself and her family, Ms. Margot Perez
has had to flee her home community of Nahuizalco and is now in hiding, and in
grave danger for her life. At this moment, Maria
Magdalena Perez (Margot’s sister and now widow of Jose Alfredo Hernandez)
is also in immediate danger and exposure as well as her three children Wendy
Magdalena, Estefany Gabriela, and Soe Valentina.
As Secretariat
of the Continental Commission Abya Yala,
we call upon you to activate the appropriate URGENT MEASURES of assessment, monitoring and reporting from the UNHCHR Regional Office for Central America
in Panama in response to the Petition
made by the Continental Commission Abya
Yala to the UNHCHR on May 5, 2019.
Sincerely,
Evie Reyes Aguirre, Calpixque
Calpolli Nahuacalco
tonal@tonatierra.org
With an ancestral ceremony and a united cry for justice, members of the indigenous peoples of western El Salvador on Monday recalled the thousands of victims of the 1932 massacre of Indians and peasants carried out on the orders of dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez.
The ruins of the La Asuncion church, known as El Llanito, in the western town of Izalco, was the site where at least 100 Indians gathered from five towns decimated in the repression ordered by Hernandez Martinez, who ruled the country from 1935-1944.
There, where the great majority of the victims were buried, the attendees worshipped Mother Earth, the wind and the Sun and paid tribute to the fallen, who had opposed the stealing of their lands and had defended the dignity of their families.
The massacre came after a popular insurrection headed by Indians and peasants and launched to reject electoral fraud and a reform that took their communal lands from them.
Margarita Guillen, a member of the Izalco indigenous community authority, who was on hand for the ceremony, told EFE that - for the participants - commemorating the date means "not forgetting where" they come from and "reminding all of society" that their "struggle continues amid so much adversity."
"We're commemorating this date ... for our massacred grandparents ... They were not communists, they were people who lived united, who shared their food and their lands for raising crops," she said.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Izalco, Rafael Latin, told EFE that the event also represents a commitment by the original peoples of western El Salvador to "show our ancestors" that they have not been forgotten.
He said that 86 years after the massacre, El Salvador's indigenous peoples "remain marginalized and their rights continue to be violated" despite the fact that in July 2014 the country's legislature ratified a constitutional reform that acknowledged their existence.
Some 25,000 to 30,000 people were killed in the massacre and the participants at the ceremony on Monday said they were asking the Salvadoran government to promise to investigate the issue "so that impunity does not prevail in the deaths of our ancestors."
The Salvadoran statistics and census directorate revealed in a 2007 study that about one million Indians live in the Central American country representing 17 percent of the population.
The indigenous peoples of El Salvador include the Nahuas, Pipiles, Lenca, Kakawiras and Maya-Chortis tribes.
TECHANTIT - MAYA VISION-
TONATIERRA
Dismantling the Doctrine of
Discovery: Source of Impunity
Call for Investigation of Human Rights Violations and Persecution Against Indigenous Peoples of El Salvador
Call for Investigation of Human Rights Violations and Persecution Against Indigenous Peoples of El Salvador
To: Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
*****************
Comisión Continental Abya Yala TECHANTIT – MAYA VISION–
TONATIERRA
Desmantelamiento de la Doctrina del Descubrimiento: Raíz de
la Impunidad
With an ancestral ceremony and a united cry for justice, members of the indigenous peoples of western El Salvador on Monday recalled the thousands of victims of the 1932 massacre of Indians and peasants carried out on the orders of dictator Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez.
The ruins of the La Asuncion church, known as El Llanito, in the western town of Izalco, was the site where at least 100 Indians gathered from five towns decimated in the repression ordered by Hernandez Martinez, who ruled the country from 1935-1944.
There, where the great majority of the victims were buried, the attendees worshipped Mother Earth, the wind and the Sun and paid tribute to the fallen, who had opposed the stealing of their lands and had defended the dignity of their families.
The massacre came after a popular insurrection headed by Indians and peasants and launched to reject electoral fraud and a reform that took their communal lands from them.
Margarita Guillen, a member of the Izalco indigenous community authority, who was on hand for the ceremony, told EFE that - for the participants - commemorating the date means "not forgetting where" they come from and "reminding all of society" that their "struggle continues amid so much adversity."
"We're commemorating this date ... for our massacred grandparents ... They were not communists, they were people who lived united, who shared their food and their lands for raising crops," she said.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Izalco, Rafael Latin, told EFE that the event also represents a commitment by the original peoples of western El Salvador to "show our ancestors" that they have not been forgotten.
He said that 86 years after the massacre, El Salvador's indigenous peoples "remain marginalized and their rights continue to be violated" despite the fact that in July 2014 the country's legislature ratified a constitutional reform that acknowledged their existence.
Some 25,000 to 30,000 people were killed in the massacre and the participants at the ceremony on Monday said they were asking the Salvadoran government to promise to investigate the issue "so that impunity does not prevail in the deaths of our ancestors."
The Salvadoran statistics and census directorate revealed in a 2007 study that about one million Indians live in the Central American country representing 17 percent of the population.
The indigenous peoples of El Salvador include the Nahuas, Pipiles, Lenca, Kakawiras and Maya-Chortis tribes.
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