Wednesday, March 08, 2017
Honduran
Farmers Sue World Bank Lending Arm for 'Profiting From Murder'
A private lending arm of the World Bank is not 'ending poverty,'
it is 'ending the lives of the poor,' says one farmer
Members of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the
Aguán Valley (MUCA) carry mock coffins bearing photos of murdered relatives
during a 2012 march against the ongoing violence in the Bajo Aguán valley.
(Photo: AFP)
Honduran farmers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against a branch
of the World Bank for funding a massive palm oil corporation that the suit
alleges has been responsible for the killings of over 100 farmers, as well as
torture, violent assaults, and "other acts of aggression."
"The horrendous spate of violence that followed the IFC's
loan to Dinant is probably one of the most severe instances of corporate-related
human rights abuse and financier negligence in the past decade."
—EarthRights International lawyer
The World Bank has
"knowingly profited from the financing of murder," argues the lawsuit filed in a federal court
in Washington, D.C.
"We have lost our compañeros, they have left our children
without fathers, it's been difficult to move forward, we live from our families
and our land and now we are left with nothing," said one of the
farmers, according to EarthRights International
(ERI), the nonprofit which filed the suit on the farmers' behalf.
All the farmers named in the suit were protected by the
pseudonyms Juan Doe and Juana Doe, to shield them from retaliation on the part
of the palm oil company, Dinant.
"We want justice and the ability to raise our children
again," the farmer added. "We have to move forward." The suit is
requesting damages for specific deaths.
The suit alleges that the "International Financial
Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group's private lending arm, together with an
IFC financial intermediary, the IFC Asset Management Corporation, have provided
millions of dollars in financing to Dinant, even though, at the time, there
were widespread allegations that Dinant employed hitmen, military forces, and
private security guards to intimidate and kill local farmers who claim Dinant's
owner stole their land decades prior," ERI wrote in a statement.
The rights advocacy organization continued:
The IFC
(with U.S. taxpayer money) and IFC-AMC knowingly financed Dinant's campaign of
terror and dispossession against Honduran farmers. The IFC's own internal
watchdog, the Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO), found that IFC
failed to adhere to its own policies to protect local communities, and
continued to allow the company to breach those safeguards and either failed to
spot or deliberately ignored the serious social, political and human rights context
in which this company is operating.
The
result was an explosion of extreme violence by public and private security
forces against the farmers, their movement leaders, and lawyers representing
them. Over 100 farmers have been killed since November 2009 when the IFC
disbursed the first half of a $30 million loan to Dinant; and the number of
killings continues to grow today. So too has IFC's support for Dinant; even
after the IFC's internal watchdog scolded the IFC for the 2009 loan, the IFC
continued supporting Dinant via an opaque system of financial intermediaries,
including the IFC-AMC and the Honduran bank, Ficohsa.
The suit claims that the purpose of the systemic violence is to
"intimidate farmers from asserting competing rights to land that Dinant
has sought to control."
"The horrendous spate of violence that followed the IFC's
loan to Dinant is probably one of the most severe instances of
corporate-related human rights abuse and financier negligence in the past
decade," said one ERI lawyer, also unnamed because of security concerns.
Another Honduran farmer quoted by ERI described the horrific
violence: "The police pulled people out of their houses. Military, police,
and guards. We saw they were beating people including kids, so we were yelling,
'Don't hit the people!' One bullet hit me, it still affects my breathing. I
didn't realize I'd been shot, but I touched it and saw blood. Another person
was shot through the stomach."
"Every day I am scared, but this is how life has
become," said a different farmer. "At the end of the attack against
me, the guards and military told me that they know where I live and that they
will come to get me if I file a complaint against them."
ERI argues: "While the IFC boasts of its mission to 'end extreme poverty by 2030 and boost prosperity in every
developing country,' the IFC has knowingly entered one of the
world's most persistent and abusive land conflicts on the side of Dinant, a
primary author of poverty and violence in Honduras. In the words of one farmer
in the Bajo Aguán, the IFC is not 'ending poverty;' it is 'ending the lives of
the poor.'"
"The IFC clearly cannot police itself and it should no
longer be allowed to hide behind a veil of immunity," an ERI lawyer said.
"The courts of the United States must be open to hear this case because
nobody—not individuals, not corporations, not governments, and not the IFC—can
get away with aiding these human rights abuses."
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Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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