The secretary of the Cabañas Environmental Committee, Neftali Ruíz, was the latest victim of violence and theft this past Friday. Several young men tied him up in his home and proceeded to search his home, computer files, and cell phones for information and supposed weapons. This morning Father Neftali, David Pereira, and Bishop Sol held a press conference at the CRIPDES office in San Salvador. Please read here for a translation of the press release and links to video of the press conference.
On July 1, 2010, Salvadoran Police and government prosecutors announced that they had arrested nine people for the murders of Ramiro Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto, Felícita Echeverría, Horacio Menjívar, and Esperanza Velasco.
At the time, they claimed that Ramiro Rivera and Santos Rodriguez had paid gang members to kill Horacio Menjívar (April 2009) and Esperanza Velasco (October 2009), and that Oscar Menjívar and his sister Naomi hired the same gang members to kill Ramiro Rivera and Santos Rodriguez in revenge in December 2009. Felícita Echeverría was an innocent bystander who was killed while riding in Ramiro’s truck when assassins struck. Authorities presume that a few days later, assassins were searching for Santos Rodriguez, but when they came across his wife Dora Alicia, they killed her instead. She was 8 months pregnant at the time and carrying her two-year old son. The two-year old was wounded but survived. The unborn child did not.
The police and prosecutors claimed at the time that the violence was a family feud between members of the Menjívar family and leaders of the CAC, which is a local anti-mining organization. In one press release, the state prosecutor’s office states that the violence was an escalation of the debate over mining. In previous and subsequent statements, they have denied any link to mining.
Though the nine suspects being held for the murders were arrested over 13 months ago, they still have not had a preliminary hearing to determine whether the prosecutors and police have enough evidence to move forward with a trial. The preliminary hearings have been scheduled and cancelled four times in the past year – the most recent was last Friday, July 29th. According to a press release from the Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC), the hearings were cancelled due to poor planning and logistics on the part of the prosecutor’s office.
According to a report by Sydney Blanco and Francisco Díaz, El Salvador has an impunity rate of 96.2%, meaning that of all murders committed in the country, only 3.8% result in a suspect being tried and convicted of the crime. Though police make arrests in 15% of all murders, the prosecutors only convict in 3.8% of them. The report places the blame for such a high impunity rate on the police, which they found were responsible for 26% of murders going unprosecuted, and the state prosecutor, which they found responsible for 54% of the murders going unprosecuted. The report says that the police and prosecutor’s office are jointly responsible the other 20% of the murder going unprosecuted.
In their recent press release, the CAC urges international organizations to take action to spur on the trial of the accused. They make the following demands:
– We urge the Attorney General’s Office to expedite this process once and for all so that the hearing, which has been suspended four times, may be held and that no more excuses are put forward further delaying the procedure;
– We demand that the investigations of the murders of Ramiro Rivera Gómez and Dora Alicia Sorto are comprehensive and coherent without trying to hide the truth;
– The prosecutors must investigate all leads, which have already been discussed publically, instead of being fixed upon a single hypothesis that we (the CAC) do not agree with;
– They (the CAC) will hold the authorities in charge of the investigation responsible if their negligence results in the suspects going free with impunity, and anything else happens to members of the CAC and the families of the victims;
– We have called on international organizations and friends to watch out for the results of this trial, and we have asked them to demand that the authorities take these cases more seriously so that we don’t have to mourn the loss of another person, since three people from the CAC have already been killed for their involvement in the organization;
– As an association defending the environment and human rights we also express that we will fight to defend life at the expense of losing our own.
While it is unclear why the prosecutors are delaying the hearings, there are real consequences. Though they are accused of murder, the suspects have a right to a trial. They were arrested over a year ago and the prosecuting attorneys have been unable to get their case to the point where they are even ready for a preliminary hearing. In addition, the family and friends of the victims have a right to see justice done. If the suspects are indeed guilty, they should be held accountable for their crimes.
The preliminary hearings and trials are also important because it is an opportunity for the public to learn more about the facts about the case. Currently, there is little known about what happened in 2009 that led to the murders. Locals believe that there are intellectual authors involved that have not yet been arrested, and the preliminary hearing is an opportunity to gain access to information that may help others continue to investigate.
Time is also essential to these cases. The more time goes by, the greater the chance that the memories of witnesses become foggy and skewed. And the more time passes the greater the likelihood that something could happen to witnesses. The most recent murder involving a member of the CAC occurred in June 2011. Though the victim was not a witness to these crimes, there are potentially others whose lives are in danger. An example of this is the August 2009 shooting of Ramiro Rivera. Oscar Menjívar had been charged from trying to kill Ramiro Rivera in August 2009, but before Rivera could testify he was killed. The judge dismissed the charges against Mr. Menjívar because that the key witness, Mr. Rivera, was dead.
The violence in Cabañas continues and there are people guilty of murder who still enjoy impunity. With every passing day, the chances that they will be brought to justice diminish. We join the CAC in calling upon El Salvador’s state prosecutors to bring those accused to trial, while continuing to consider all other lines of investigation, including the possibility that there are intellectual authors to these crimes and that the violence was more than just a family feud.
Investigation into latest assassination begins
SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR
Danielle Mackey
The body of murdered fourth-year university student and active member of the environmental movement in the area of Ilobasco, Cabanas, Juan Francisco Duran Ayala, has finally been returned to his family in San Salvador. On June 24, 2011, the family gathered together with members of civil society and representatives from government agencies to exhume his body from a common grave in the Bermeja Cemetery, where he had been buried by the National Civilian Police. Juan Francisco, who lived in Ilobasco, left his home at 9 a.m. on June 3 to attend his classes in San Salvador and never arrived. His body was found on the same day by the police, next to a basketball court in the community of Amatepec in metropolitan San Salvador, with two gunshot wounds to the head.
Juan Francisco’s cousin and a designated family representative, Norberto Hernandez Ayala, claims that because the cadaver had several tattoos, the coroner’s office labeled it as an unidentified person and probable gang member, and buried it in a common grave. Juan Francisco had a tattoo of Che Guevara on his abdomen, and another two of the Barcelona soccer team and a favorite U.S. basketball team on his side and back, respectively.
His body was identified on June 14 by his father, Jose Benjamin Ayala, in photographs provided by the coroner’s office. Logistical negotiations between the attorney general’s office and the family slowed the process of exhumation ten days. Juan Francisco was laid to rest in a funeral on Saturday June 25, 2011.
Though there exist various theories about the motive for Juan Francisco’s assassination, in a press conference today, Hernandez Ayala confirmed that the primary hypothesis is the young man’s involvement as an environmental activist. The victim’s mother, Marta Duran, added, “What is clear here is that they’re killing innocent people. My son was only a student, dedicated to his studies. I just want justice for my son.”
The afternoon before he disappeared, June 2, Juan Francisco had been seen putting up fliers around the Ilobasco area where he lived, as an active volunteer for the Environmental Committee of Cabanas (CAC.) The messages on the fliers included an open invitation to a public forum on mining, phrases promoting respect for the environment, and a demand for the controversial Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim, to retire its operation from El Salvador. (Pacific Rim is one of two mining companies that have sued the Salvadoran government for a total of almost $200 million, for refusing to grant them permits to conduct metallic mineral mining in several regions of the country.)
Juan is the fourth person active in the anti-mining movement in the department of Cabanas to be murdered in the past two years, and the third victim from the CAC specifically. In a press release published by the CAC, the committee declares, “This assassination comes only two years since the kidnapping and assassination of the anti-mining activist Marcelo Rivera and the assassinations of two of our members, Ramiro Rivera and Dora Alicia Sorto. We believe that if these cases are not cleared up with an investigation that leads to the intellectual authors, impunity will continue reigning in Cabanas, and the intimidation, violence and assassinations will continue.”
A secondary hypothesis of Juan Francisco’s murder is that he was yet one more victim of the constant daily violence that plagues this nation of only 6 million people. According to data from the National Civilian Police, the current daily murder average is 11, and on the date of Juan’s killing, four other unidentified partial-or-complete corpses were found. That number does not include the identified victims of that day. In fact, if the violence continues at this pace, the homicide total for 2011 would be more than 4,000. The local organization Voices on the Border points out that this is an astoundingly high number when compared to New York City, whose population size is higher than El Salvador’s and reports only 412 homicides for the entirety of 2009. The environmental movement discards this theory, stating that Juan Francisco’s involvement with the movement was too public and too recent to his sudden murder for these things to be unconnected. They also cite the continuing string of assassinations involving anti-mining activists.
Local environmental activists call on the National Civilian Police and the Attorney General of the Republic to conduct exhaustive investigations of the string of violent crimes in the department of Cabanas. They cite corruption and illicit trades within three local mayoral offices—facts they claim to be well-known among the local population, and which they list in today’s press release—as well as ties between the aforementioned authorities and the mining company Pacific Rim, as possible motives for the violence. As Francisco Pineda, President of the CAC and recent recipient of the internationally recognized Goldman Environmental Prize, asserts, “We can make a good guess about who are the intellectual authors of this crime given our lived experiences here, but that’s not our responsibility. The attorney general and the police have the obligation to investigate and determine the guilty parties.”
On June 24, the attorney general’s office informed Juan Francisco’s family that they had appointed them a lawyer. On the same day, the police also assured them that the investigation had begun. Hernandez Ayala says that the family trusts that what they’ve been told is true, and that justice will take its course. However, a lingering concern is the Salvadoran court system’s lack of precedent in completing exhaustive investigations. A United Nations Development Program report from 2007 found that only 14% of cases enter the judicial system, and only 3.8% are ever fully prosecuted, with the guilty party brought to justice. Speaking specifically of the anti-mining struggle, in all four previous assassination cases, material authors were quickly rounded up and prosecuted, but there exists significant evidence to suggest that they were hired assassins. In none of these cases — of which Juan Francisco is simply the most recent, and the movement fears will not be the last — have intellectual authors been identified by the authorities.
Juan Francisco’s family remembers him as humble, respectful and optimistic. His university professors say that he stood out for his willingness to work together with his peers and his dedication to his studies. He was thirty years old at the time of death, and would have graduated next year with a degree in Linguistics from the Technological University of San Salvador.
On Sunday we posted an alert that anti-mining activist Juan Francisco Duran Ayala has been missing for over a week. He disappeared the day after he was hanging anti-mining posters in Ilobasco, Cabañas. Representatives of the CAC, the local environmental organization to which Juan Francisco belongs, report that the Mayor of Ilobasco, José Maria “Cheyo” Castellanos ordered municipal police to remove the signs that Juan Francisco was hanging the day before he disappeared.
Please join Juan Francisco’s family and friends in calling on the Salvadoran authorities, including the Attorney General’s office and the National Civilian Police, to set up a special search party to find Juan Francisco, as well as investigate all cases of threats and violence against civil society actors in the region. The CAC demands that these investigations also consider the links between the powerful network of local mayors, including Mayor José Bautista of San Isidro, Mayor Edgar Bonilla of Sensuntepeque, and Mayor “Cheyo” Castellanos of Ilobasco, and Pacific Rim Mining Company.
Here’s what you can do:
Estimado Señor Fiscal General de la República,
Como miembro de la comunidad internacional, quiero expresar mi profunda preocupación sobre las nuevas amenazas y los casos de violencia contra líderes sociales en Cabañas.
Hace más de una semana Juan Francisco Duran Ayala, miembro del Comité Ambiental de Cabañas en Defensa del Agua y Cultura (CAC) desapareció, a pocos días después de haber participado en actividades contra la minería en Cabañas. Urge que el PNC y la Fiscalía establezcan un equipo especializado de investigación sobre este caso.
Además, urge una investigación profunda y eficaz sobre este último caso y todas las amenazas contra los ambientalistas de Cabañas, para determinar quiénes son los autores materiales, intelectuales y financieros. Es necesario también re-abrir los casos de Marcelo Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto y Ramiro Rivera para investigar vínculos entre estos caso, los asesinatos de Darwin Serrano y Gerardo Abrego León, las nuevas amenazas contra el personal de Radio Victoria, y la desaparición de Juan Francisco Duran Ayala.
Finalmente, tomando en cuenta los nexos entre esta violencia y la lucha contra la minería, los casos de violencia y las amenazas contra líderes sociales en Cabañas requieren una investigación profunda para identificar los autores materiales e intelectuales. Estas investigaciones deben de incluir posibles nexos entre la violencia y la compañía minera Pacific Rim, y las autoridades locales como los alcaldes de San Isidro, Ilobasco y Sensuntepeque.
El hecho de que la violencia y amenazas que se han dado en Cabañas desde 2007 siguen en impunidad ha permitido que surgieran los nuevos casos de violencia. Pido que, por favor, tome las medidas necesarias para asegurar justicia y protección para los afectados.
Agradezco de antemano sus gestiones para agilizar las investigaciones y espero que pronto se haga justicia en estos casos. Estaré pendiente de las acciones de la Fiscalía y seguiré informando a los y las funcionarias de gobierno en mi país sobre estos casos.
Atentamente,
Your Name
Estimado Señor Ministro de Seguridad y Justicia,
Como miembro de la comunidad internacional, quiero expresar mi profunda preocupación sobre las nuevas amenazas y los casos de violencia contra líderes sociales en Cabañas.
Hace más de una semana Juan Francisco Duran Ayala, miembro del Comité Ambiental de Cabañas en Defensa del Agua y Cultura (CAC) desapareció, a pocos días después de haber participado en actividades contra la minería en Cabañas. Urge que el PNC y la Fiscalía establezcan un equipo especializado de investigación sobre este caso.
Además, urge una investigación profunda y eficaz sobre este último caso y todas las amenazas contra los ambientalistas de Cabañas, para determinar quiénes son los autores materiales, intelectuales y financieros. Es necesario también re-abrir los casos de Marcelo Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto y Ramiro Rivera para investigar vínculos entre estos casos, los asesinatos de Darwin Serrano y Gerardo Abrego León, las nuevas amenazas contra el personal de Radio Victoria, y la desaparición de Juan Francisco Duran Ayala.
Finalmente, tomando en cuenta los nexos entre esta violencia y la lucha contra la minería, los casos de violencia y las amenazas contra líderes sociales en Cabañas requieren una investigación profunda para identificar los autores materiales e intelectuales. Estas investigaciones deben de incluir posibles nexos entre la violencia y la compañía minera Pacific Rim, y las autoridades locales como los alcaldes de San Isidro, Ilobasco y Sensuntepeque.
El hecho de que la violencia y amenazas que se han dado en Cabañas desde 2007 siguen en impunidad ha permitido que surgieran los nuevos casos de violencia. Pido que, por favor, tome las medidas necesarias para asegurar justicia y protección para los afectados.
Agradezco de antemano sus gestiones para agilizar las investigaciones y espero que pronto se haga justicia en estos casos. Estaré pendiente de las acciones de la PNC y seguiré informando a los y las funcionarias de gobierno en mi país sobre estos casos.
Atentamente,
Your Name
As a member of the international community, I want to express my deep concern about the new cases of violence and threats against social leaders in Cabañas.
More than a week ago Juan Francisco Duran Ayala, member of the Environmental Committee of Cabañas in Defense of Water and Cultura (CAC) disappeared, a few days after having participated in activities protesting mining in Cabañas. A specialized task force of prosecutors and members of the National Civilian police should be assigned to investigate this case.
In addition, there needs to be a thorough and efficient investigations into this recent case and all of the threats to environmentalists in Cabañas, to determine who the material, intellectual and financial authors are. It is also necessary to re-open the Marcelo Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto, and Ramiro Rivera cases in order to investigate links between those cases, the murders of Darwin Serrano and Gerardo Abrego León, the new threats against the staff of Radio Victoria, and the disappearance of Juan Francisco Duran Ayala.
Finally, taking into account the ties between this violence and the anti-mining struggles, the cases of violence and threats against Cabañas social movement leaders require a thorough investigation to identify the material and intellectual authors. These investigations should look into the possible ties between the violence and the mining company Pacific Rim as well as local authorities like the mayors of San Isidro, Ilobasco, and Sensuntepeque.
This new case of violence has arisen because the violence and threats that have occurred in Cabañas since 2007 remain in impunity. I ask that you please take the necessary measures to assure justice and protection for those affected.
Thank you in advance for your efforts to begin thorough investigations and I hope that soon there will be justice in these cases. I will continue to follow the actions of the Attorney General’s office and the National Civil Police (PCN) and will continue informing my elected officials about these cases.
Buenos (días/tardes)
Mi nombre es_______________________ y llamo para expresar mi preocupación sobre la desaparición de Juan Francisco Duran Ayala y la violencia contra líderes sociales en Cabañas.
Urge una investigación profunda sobre la desaparición del Señor Duran Ayala con un equipo especializado, y así también es necesario re-abrir los casos de Marcelo Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto y Ramiro Rivera para investigar vínculos entre estos caso, los asesinatos de Darwin Serrano y Gerardo Abrego León, las nuevas amenazas contra el personal de Radio Victoria y la desaparición del Señor Duran Ayala.
El hecho de que la violencia y amenazas anteriores quedaron en impunidad ha permitido que surgieran los nuevos hechos de violencia. Pido que el Fiscal General tome las medidas necesarias para asegurar justicia y protección para las y los afectados.
Gracias
Buenos (días/tardes)
Mi nombre es_______________________ y llamo para expresar mi preocupación sobre la desaparición de Juan Francisco Duran Ayala y la violencia contra líderes sociales en Cabañas.
Urge una investigación profunda sobre la desaparición del Señor Duran Ayala con un equipo especializado, y así también es necesario re-abrir los casos de Marcelo Rivera, Dora Alicia Sorto y Ramiro Rivera para investigar vínculos entre estos caso, los asesinatos de Darwin Serrano y Gerardo Abrego León, las nuevas amenazas contra el personal de Radio Victoria y la desaparición del Señor Duran Ayala.
El hecho de que la violencia y amenazas anteriores quedaron en impunidad ha permitido que surgieran los nuevos hechos de violencia. Pido que el PNC tome las medidas necesarias para asegurar justicia y protección para las y los afectados.
Gracias.
And we’d like to thank the folks at CISPES and US Sister Cities for their hard work in drafting the letter and script!
Voices on the Border 