(Euskara) (Castellano)
A month ago (18 October) we celebrated the decision to release the 5 water defenders of Santa Marta (El Salvador) after almost two years in prison (since January 2023). Then, as had already been raised, despite the length of the process, the Prosecutor’s Office could not prove the existence of crimes, nor the participation of the five in the accusations against them, and they demonstrated the innocence they claimed.
Therefore, the Santa Marta Community, which has mobilised so forcefully for justice for its leaders, and the organisation ADES (Asociación de Desarrollo Económico Social), to which they belong, have already ‘demanded that the Public Prosecutor’s Office refrain from appealing the ruling, so that the definitive release of our comrades can take place as soon as possible’.
But now, once again, the Criminal Chamber of Cojutepeque has decided to reverse the final dismissal of the decision that exempted the five of them from criminal responsibility. In view of this, we join the Santa Marta Community and ADES Santa Marta in expressing from here too, Euskal Herria (Basque Country), ‘our most energetic rejection of the decision of the Chamber of the Second Section of the Centre of Cojutepeque to reverse the acquittal issued by the Sentencing Court of Sensuntepeque on 18 October, which gave the final dismissal to our community leaders’.
It is ‘an unusual fact’ that the court should admit an appeal when the whole trial and after almost two years of unjust imprisonment has shown that this case has no legal basis whatsoever. The accusation against the five is of an alleged war crime for which there is no real evidence.
Once again, this shows that the ‘Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) is determined to criminalise our environmental defenders’, with the sole aim of demobilising a community that has been able to stand up to mining in their territory but whose actions have also transcended the country as a whole.
The news also comes just as legal proceedings have begun here in the Basque Country against the seven activists against the Aroztegia, the urban development macro-project in Lekaroz, Navarre. They are asking for fines of 56,000 euros and a total of 20 years in prison for them. In their case, too, there is a clear attempt to criminalise them in order to make the punishment more severe and more exemplary. So we can see that repression is widespread on the Planet to favour capitalist and extractive projects. The campaign in their favour has also announced mobilisations in their favour for the 1st of February 2025 in Iruñea (Pamplona), Navarre.
As we have said, we once again join the community of Santa Marta and ADES, and the international community that has stood by the Five all this time, in denouncing this outrage and affirming our claims and their work for an end to metal mining in El Salvador. AND we also stand with the Aroztegia 7 and will join any of the protests they organise.
We again stand in solidarity with Miguel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez, Pedro Rivas, Teodoro Pachecho and Saúl Rivas and their families in the face of this new extension of their punishments. This only prolongs a situation of instability for them, for the mere fact of being active for their community, the environment, water and their territory. And once again we demand for them to be respected as citizens, and to cease this harassment against them and against the community of Santa Marta, which already has a long history of persecution by the civil war they suffered and later by the mining companies.
Thus, we join them in their demands:
Freedom for the community leaders of Santa Marta and ADES!
Stop the criminalisation and persecution of environmental activism!
Yes to Life, No to mining!
From the press conference of the Aroztegia 7 (in Argia):
‘They want to criminalise the movement and set a precedent with this trial, that is very serious’.
The company Palacio de Arozteguia S.L has sent seven activists against the Aroztegia de Lekaroz urban development macro-project to court. They are asking for fines of 56,000 euros and a total of 20 years in prison. On 26 November, a large press conference was held in the Lekaroz pelota court, at which a demonstration in support of the defendants was announced for 1 February 2025 in Iruñea (Pamplona). ‘They say that we are a criminal gang, but that is false, because at one point they have no proof that we were there’, denounced Garbiñe Elizegi, one of the seven defendants.
‘The accusation is very serious because they want to criminalise the popular movement and set a precedent. If before it was all terrorism, now it is criminal gangs’, said Elizegi. Elizegi explained that there has been a possibility of an agreement in recent months, as the company’s lawyers, those of the defendants and the public prosecutor’s office have been negotiating. ‘We have shown our willingness to accept what we did: that we stood in front of the machines together with other citizens. But the criminal gang thing is a red line for us’, she explained. In fact, the defendants believe that the company is trying to designate them as a ‘criminal group’ because of two lawsuits it has filed against the governments of Navarre and Spain. ‘(The company) accuses the governments of not having provided sufficient means to protect it in times of encampment, and for this it needs our status as a ‘criminal group’, she says.
The defendants have also denounced the damage being caused by the Government of Navarre by designating the projects as a Sectoral Plan of Supramunicipal Impact (PGPUD). ‘The Government of Change claimed in 2015 that was going to change UPN’s way of imposing many projects, but today is the day that they continue to use this formula’, she recalled. She also criticised the fact that the Aroztegia project has gone one step further, as projects classified as being of ‘foral interest’ have more facilities for processing, such as the Erdiz quarries. ‘They have copied this formula in the community with the Tapia Law. They are different governments, the parties change, but the threat of prison and the imposition of projects continues, and this is what they call democracy’, she denounced.
Call to participate in the mobilisations
The accused activists expect the trial to take place at the beginning of February, a date they have been given for the time being. For this reason, they have announced that in the coming weeks and months they will carry out different mobilisations and initiatives, and have stressed that the support of the public will be necessary. ‘We are clear that this is not something specific against us, it is an attack on an entire people. If so far we have advanced with the support of the citizens, we will also do it this way, together and collectively’, she stressed.
‘Behind this is the general strategy of putting our lands in the hands of capital, so it should be a national strategy to resist this’.
And the fact is that, despite the fact that this macro-project is located in Baztan, she stresses that it is directly related to many other environmental struggles that are taking place at the level of Euskal Herria (Basque Country). ‘Behind this is the general strategy of putting our lands in the hands of capital and, therefore, it should be a national strategy to resist this’, concludes Elizegi.
