Gloria Silvia Orellan
@DiarioCoLatino
“Our position is firm, and we say that the deterioration of democratic spaces in El Salvador has been worsening lately. And this closure of democratic spaces is a mechanism that dictatorships always resort to,” said Alfredo Leiva, director of ADES.
The government’s repression is aimed at “repressing and discouraging” defenders or those who protest against the government in defense of territories and their rights, he added.
Leiva attended the presentation of the Report Environmental Defenders: Care Networks against Criminalization Study of the cases “The defenders of Santa Marta and the Silverio Morales Case.”
A solidarity campaign is currently underway with the environmentalists of Cabañas, made up of: Miguel Ángel Gómez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega and Teodoro Antonio Pacheco, directors of ADES and community leaders. The campaign began on September 22 and will conclude on October 4 of this year.
For Alfredo Leiva, the capture of the five environmentalists, which occurred in the early hours of January 11, 2023, is part of the government’s intention to “reactivate metal mining in El Salvador.” These five defenders had already reported these signs in the Cabañas territories.
“We continue to denounce the intention to reactivate mining, which is reflected in the allocation of a budget to the Ministry of Economy, to review and update the Law on the Prohibition of Metallic Mining; joining an International Panel of countries that promote metallic mining and the reform of the Law of the Directorate of Hydrocarbons and Mines, so there are those intentions,” said Leiva.
“Furthermore, there is a lobbying effort by mining companies with the population of Cabañas. And we have documents that confirm the purchase of land that previously belonged to Pacific Rim, bought by Agrícola San José, a subsidiary of Titan Resources, a US mining company. That is what is behind the capture of our comrades,” said Leiva.
Government paves the way for companies to avoid resistance in their territories
Regarding the work of the Cabañas environmentalists, Leiva added that they have played an important role in “organizing the resistance” in the first decade of the struggle to ban mining in the country.
“One of the detainees is the executive director of ADES, the other is a legal advisor and the other three are community leaders who were active during the process that led to the ban on metal mining in 2017,” he said.
“The case against them is a fabricated fact, precisely to justify the arrest, because what they (the Prosecutor’s Office) have is that there was a disappearance of a person during the conflict, so, it is not known what happened to her, or who was involved in her disappearance?” Leiva reaffirmed.
However, what he considered more serious is that in the construction of “that story,” with the intention of blaming his colleagues, they are being accused of depriving of liberty, murdering and illicitly associating with the alleged person mentioned by the Attorney General’s Office.
“This is dangerous because it aims to set a precedent so that they can persecute more opponents in the future. And people who are dedicated to defending human rights,” he said.
“Our colleagues have been under house arrest since September 2023. We have been able to speak with them and of course, during their stay in the penitentiary system, their health has deteriorated. They are elderly people who have degenerative diseases and we can say that, despite being stable, they require medical attention,” said Leiva.
Criminalization impacts families and communities
Gabriela Solórzano, researcher who presented the report Environmental Defenders: Care Networks against Criminalization Study of the cases “The defenders of Santa Marta and the Silverio Morales Case”, stated that the objective of this document responds to the need to present an “alternative view of the situation of defenders” and to understand how this process has generated profound impacts in different areas of society.
“As the National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, in the context of raising awareness through the case of the leaders defending ADES and Santa Marta and the trial of Levi Morlaes, son of the indigenous leader Silverio Morales, and the scope of criminalization,” he added.
“Human rights defenders face political and economic systems such as neoliberal extractive capitalism in a country with fragile guarantees for defenders of environmental rights and human rights in general, which is in itself a difficult task,” Solórzano added.
Regarding the state of exception, he pointed out that it represents a period from 2021 to 2024, as a space of “greater risks of criminalization” and that it has become a “tool” to limit opposition voices, by limiting constitutional guarantees.
“This measure has become the norm for the country’s legal system, to criminalize opposition groups such as unions of municipal workers, human and environmental rights defenders, former government officials and any form of demand that is positioned as opposition,” he explained.
“In both cases of Levi Morales and the defenders of Santa Marta and ADES, there were previous harassment processes, expressed in the case of the defenders of ADES, an alleged investigation into the massacres carried out by the Attorney General’s Office. And in the case of Silverio Morales, his work as an indigenous leader represented a risk condition for his family, criminalizing his son Levi,” Solórzano pointed out.
#Salvador #democratic #spaces #deteriorating #Alfredo #Leiva #ADES
