Hitmen Assassinate Prominent Woman Activist

[Andronex]

Source: Upside down World.

Six days after heavily armed men took the life of a respected anti-mining activist in Cabañas, El Salvador, another prominent community leader has been assassinated. On December 26 at 3:30 pm Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto, 32, was killed as she returned from doing laundry at the river near her home in Cantón Trinidad, in the municipality of Sensuntepeque, Cabañas. “Alicia,” as she was known to friends, was carrying one of her children in her arms as she was shot dead. The child was shot in the foot and is receiving medical care.

Since 2005, many Cabañas residents like Recinos Sorto have been involved in a fierce battle over whether the US/Canadian Pacific Rim Mining Company can re-open the shuttered El Dorado gold mine. Late last year, outgoing President Tony Saca responded to local pressure and negated Pacific Rim’s permit applications for gold extraction. Activists are concerned that re-starting the mine will threaten local water supplies and ruin their ability to grow crops. Supporters—mostly Pacific Rim employees and their families—see the revival of the mine as a source of job creation and economic development.


Read more: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2279/1/

[UndertheOcean]

1. Wow , ... what an abhorrent thing , how the assasins sleep at night

or how do they justify this to themselves ....the thought process is just alien to me

[EFerrari]

2. Rest in peace, hermanita.

[Andronex]

3. Many latin american activists are being assasinated...

by corporate or RW interests, I wonder why this is not news, or considered terrorism when some idiot setting fire to his shorts is ?

[xchrom]

4. Recommend

[atreides1]

5. Looks Like a Repeat

A North American company wants the resources of a small Central American nation.

[John Q. Citizen]

6. El agua vale mas que el oro

[midnight]

7. Who shoots a mother with a child in her arms? For Alicia and her family, I hope

justice is swift....

[Goldstein1984]

8. This IS a repeat

U.S. companies, with help from their minions in the U.S. government, have a long history of benefiting from the murder of dissidents in Latin America. Too much to list here, and too easy to read or Google to waste the time.

We condemn socialist leaders like Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez for the same reason--socialism is bad for business.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Andronex, the company has a US subsidiary. It employs Americans in Nevada.

There's a case to be made for saying this is US "Late Breaking News" here, I think. Don't get down if some of your articles get pushed into other forums. Just keep going.

Here's what I just saw about the Pacific Rim Mining Co.:

May 06, 2009
Pacific Rim Uses CAFTA to take on Mining Regs in El Salvador

~snip~
El Salvador is not alone in choosing to preserve natural resources over mining projects that do not bring long-term employment and whose profits will flow out of the country. And Pacific Rim is not alone in using NAFTA or CAFTA investor rights to challenge local decisions over mining. The United States is currently fending off a $50 million NAFTA investment suit over California's mining regulations.

Although Pacific Rim is a Canadian company that shouldn't even be eligible to utilize investor rights under CAFTA (an agreement between the United States and five Central American countries), they have found a way around this problem. Pacific Rim Mining Corp. will bring this investment suit through its Nevadan subsidiary, Pac Rim Cayman LLC! As with all NAFTA and CAFTA investor-state cases, the case will be decided outside of domestic courts by a panel of arbitrators.

And all this talk of a Panama FTA, which contains the same kind of investor rights found in NAFTA and CAFTA could makes matters much worse. Panama is home to an estimated 350,000 subsidiaries of foreign mulinational companies. Just as Canadian company Pacific Rim used its Nevadan subsidiary to file a CAFTA investor suit against El Salvador, so could any of the 350,000 parent companies use their Panamanian subsidiaries to take the United States government to task over environmental and other public interest regulations.

http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2009/05/canadian-mining-company-pacific-rim-has-responded-to-grassroots-effortsagainst-its-proposed-mining-project-in-el-salvadorby-f.html

~~~~~~~~~
They are dirty schemers, good at sliming their way around the law in other matters, too.

Around a week ago, they killed a man, as well:

El Salvador: Ramiro Rivera Shot to Death in Cabañas
Written by Hector Berríos
Monday, 21 December 2009

(Note: UDW first reported on Ramiro Rivera in August, when he miraculously survived an attack where he was shot eight times in the legs and back. A Real News report released at the time aired footage of a Rivera interview. The attack occurred weeks after the assassination of Marcelo Rivera (no relation) in Cabañas, El Salvador and marked the beginning of an open season on activists opposed to mining in the area. Here we re-print the testimony of Hector Berríos of MUFRAS-32, an organization that has accompanied many of the anti-mining groups in their struggle for justice. A longer article on the assassination of R. Rivera and its significance in light of the ongoing struggle against Pacific Rim's mining efforts is forthcoming. --ed.)

http://upsidedownworld.org.nyud.net:8090/main/images/stories/ramiro.jpg

December 20, 4:00pm - Hitmen gunned down and killed our compañero Ramiro Rivera Gomez, Vice president of the Comité Ambiental de Cabañas, (Cabañas Environmental Committee), in the Canton of Trinidad, city of Ilobasco, Cabañas. Rivera was a leader in the resistance against the Pacific Rim Mining Company.

He was active in raising consciousness about the company’s actions, and was one of the first persons who suffered attacks by Pacific Rim employees. On August 7th, 2009 Rivera was victim of an assassination attempt in which he was shot in the back eight times. It was a miracle, thanks to G-d, that he survived. This latest event can be added to the assassination of Marcelo Rivera, ASIC member, the threats to our colleagues at Radio Victoria, the kidnapping and assassination attempt of Father Luis Alberto Quintanilla, threats made against the director of ADES as well as those against the fellow members of CACA and MUFRAS-32.

It is most striking that two security guards, members of the Witnesses and Victims Protection Unit of the National Civil Police, were accompanying compañero Ramiro Rivera Gomez, and were unable to do anything to evade the death of our colleague.

Furthermore, neither suffered injuries and the assassins injured a fourteen year-old girl that was with Ramiro Rivera. We must remember that earlier this year, on Thursday, June 18, at the “El Molino”cut-off, in the municipality of Ilobasco, Department of Cabañas, environmental activist Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno, was seen for the last time. His lifeless body was rescued from a well on June 30th, with clear signs of torture.

The forced disappearance, followed by torture and assassination of Marcelo Rivera, as well as that of Ramiro Rivera Gomez, is part of an increase in violence in the municipalities in Cabañas, ranging from death threats and kidnapping attempts against the men and women that have organized to halt the Pacific Rim mining project.

The violence that has fallen upon the communities is worrisome, but equally worrisome and outrageous is the disfunctionality of the State institutions that are charged with directing and carrying out criminal investigations, of which we can affirm by the response of the Organized Crime Unit of the Attorney General and the Sub-director of the National Civil Police, Officer Mauricio Landaverde, who in our meeting with him told us that we should stop speaking out and that these were all just common crimes.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2266/74/

~~~~~~~~~
This reflects ONLY the very, very last most recent corporate crimes by this mining company.

You will discover there is a scum element which will maintain in message boards that the corporate murders of activists are nothing more than random crimes, and SOME of this human filth also will blame the victims themselves, insinuating they are merely low class riff-raff who are violent themselves, and bring it on themselves.

Don't get discouraged about seeing your LBN posts go elsewhere. People will STILL be reading them. Keep up the spirit.

Welcome to D.U. :hi:

[Andronex]

10. "Don't get discouraged..."

At what point, being a democrat and a progressive is a contradiction, not surprisingly the anti Chavez posts or any posts that give the official narrative on world events do not get yanked or moved around, we are being manipulated like kids.

[Judi Lynn]

11. The contradiction arrives in the form of trolls who are stealth corporatists.

As we both know the Democratic Party has (until invaded by politicians at the government level) ALWAYS and ONLY represented the voice of the people, of labor, of human rights from the beginning.

Real progress is always hard because greed, hatred, malignancy, racism from the right ALWAYS try to prevent it.

[ellie]

12. Kicking this

[lsewpershad]

13. K&R

More reason to Avatar.

[Judi Lynn]

14. El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated

El Salvador: another anti-mining activist assassinated

Submitted by WW4 Report on Mon, 12/28/2009 - 13:30. On Dec. 26, Dora "Alicia" Recinos Sorto, 32, was assassinated—the second anti-mining activist killed this week in the small community of Nueva Trinidad in El Salvador's Cabañas department. Recinos Sorto was eight months pregnant and carrying her two-year old child when she was shot on her way back from doing laundry at a nearby river. She and her husband, José Santos Rodríguez, were outspoken opponents of the non-operational El Dorado mine which Vancouver-based Pacific Rim is seeking to reopen despite widespread community opposition.

Rodríguez is a board member of the Environmental Committee of Cabañas, an organization that formed to educate the community about health and environmental risks of cyanide contamination from gold extraction. The Committee's vice-president, Ramiro Rivera, was gunned down on Dec. 20 despite having been under 24-hour police protection since being shot eight times in August. President Mauricio Funes vowed to investigate the murder, stating, "I hope this case will not remain in impunity the way that so many others do." These attacks follow the late June kidnapping, torture and assassination of Marcelo Rivera (no relation), in the nearby municipality of San Isidro.

Earlier this year, Recinos Sorto reported that her husband was receiving death threats and that unidentified men had come looking for him at their home. Oscar Menjívar, the man accused of shooting Rivera in August, had previously attacked Rodríguez with a machete. Menjívar’s neighbors report that he was one of Pacific Rim Mining's paid "promoters." According to Rodríguez, "It is Pacific Rim who is responsible for this, because Oscar and I were great friends before they arrived. They are the source of all of this."

Pacific Rim ceased operations at El Dorado after local protests forced the company out and the Salvadoran government subsequently denied extraction permits. President Funes stated his opposition to the project during his presidential campaign earlier this year and University of Central America polls show that over 62% of the population opposes gold mining.

In response, Pacific Rim opened an investor-state arbitration case against the Salvadoran government in April under the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The company filed the suit through a recently acquired subsidiary, Pac Rim Cayman, based in Reno, Nevada. According to Pacific Rim CEO Thomas Shrake, the company is seeking "hundreds of millions" of dollars in the arbitration, which is scheduled to begin in early 2010. In November, Pacific Rim received notice from the New York Stock Exchange that it is in danger of being delisted after posting net losses for five straight years; the company then announced that it will seek to generate CDN $2.36 million by selling shares of stock to finance its legal case against the Salvadoran government. The company does not have any other mining projects in operation. (CISPES, Dec. 28)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/8114

[Judi Lynn]

15. Pregnant Anti-Mining Activist Assassinated in El Salvador

December 27, 2009
Pregnant Anti-Mining Activist Assassinated in El Salvador
Second opponent to Pacific Rim slain this week
by Moira Peters →Free Trade & Gateway Projects

Nearly two years ago, he lost two fingers because he opposed a Canadian-owned gold mine in Cantina Trinidad, El Salvador. Yesterday, Jose Santos Rodriguez lost his wife, some say for the same reason.

Dora Alicia Sorto Recinos, 32, was shot and killed yesterday at 3:30 pm when she was returning home from doing laundry in a nearby river. She was eight months pregnant. Her son, who was accompanying her, was shot in the foot.

Santos Rodriguez is a farmer and active member of the Environmental Committee of Cabanas (CAC), a citizen group in opposition to Pacific Rim's proposed El Dorado gold mine. In April, 2008, he was attacked by Oscar Menjivar, a neighbour who had relationships with local mayors who supported the mine. In the attack, Menjivar cut off two of Santos Rodriguez' fingers with a machete.

According to a press release by Movimiento Unificado Francisco Sánchez-1932 (MUFRAS-32), Sorto Recinos had recently informed MUFRAS-32 that men with rifles had come to her house, looking for her husband. He was not home at the time.

The assassination of Sorto Recinos is the second murder this week of an opponent to Pacific Rim's proposed El Dorado mine, and the latest in a string of assassinations of civilian opponents to Canadian mining projects in Latin America.

Ramiro Rivera Gomez was shot and killed on December 20, in spite of 24-hour police protection.

MUFRAS-32 says the community is most alarmed by the lack of police investigation into these crimes. There have been no arrests for Rivera Gomez' assassination, and the community sees only "the most serious lack of will in discovering the causes of these murders," according to the release.

http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/2391

[EFerrari]

16. Amy's segment this morning:

Anti-Mining Activists Killed in El Salvador

For the second time in a week, a prominent anti-mining activist has been assassinated in El Salvador. On Saturday, thirty-two-year-old Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto was shot dead near her home. One of her children was also injured in the shooting. Sorto was an active member of the Cabañas Environment Committee, which has campaigned against the reopening of a gold mine owned by the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company.


http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/29/anti_mining_activists_killed_in_el

Audio, video, transcript at link.