[link removed] Share ([link removed])

[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fjunejuly-2025-newsletter Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fjunejuly-2025-newsletter)

[link removed] Forward ([link removed])

July 7, 2025


**
Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
The “quiet period” is over
------------------------------------------------------------


**
June-July 2025 Rights Action Newsletter
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]

THANK-YOU Rights Action supporters. Your donations and grants, over many years, directly helped achieve the successful resolution of the Hudbay lawsuits. While there are limitations with civil law remedies, that we will explore in our future work, Rights Action is proud to have been part of, beginning to the end, this precedent-setting, hard fought for and costly struggle for a measure of real justice and corporate accountability.

Thank-you all
Grahame Russell
Camila Rich

Aftermath of landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
By lawyers Murray Klippenstein and Cory Wanless, and Grahame Russell, May 21, 2025 ([link removed])

On October 7, 2024, thirteen Maya Q’eqchi’ Plaintiffs from Guatemala, their lawyers in Canada, and Rights Action, announced the successful settlement ([link removed]) after 14 years of legal battles of their landmark lawsuits against Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals.

October 3, 2024: The Hudbay Plaintiffs and their legal counsel and advisors in the Hotel Las Americas, Guatemala City, after a day of signing settlement documents in the lawsuits. Back: Carmela Caal Quib, Amalia Cac Tiul, Santos Alicia Caal Choc (daughter of plaintiff Elena Quib Choc, deceased), Lucia Caal Chun, Angelica Choc, Luisa Caal Chun, Murray Klippenstein, Rosa Elvira Choc Ich, Elvira Choc Chub, Olivia Asig Xol, Margarita Caal Caal, Irma Yolanda Choc Quib, Irma Yolanda Choc Cac. Front: Grahame Russell, German Chub Choc, Cory Wanless, Luis Adolfo Ich Choc (son of Adolfo Ich and Angelica Choc). Photo: Winston Scott

The precedent setting lawsuits (Choc v Hudbay Minerals Inc., ([link removed]) 2013 ONSC 1414) address mining-linked violence the Plaintiffs suffered in the vicinity of the Fenix mine, formerly owned and operated by Hudbay on Q’eqchi’ lands in eastern Guatemala. The Plaintiffs feel vindicated by the settlement, and hope that the litigation will act as a warning to other companies.

The three overlapping lawsuits were filed in Ontario in 2010 and 2011 against Hudbay, to seek a measure of justice for three major events in Guatemala: the September 27, 2009 killing of Adolfo Ich Cháman by Mynor Padilla (then head of the Fenix mine’s private security force), and security guards under his command; the September 27, 2009 shooting and paralysis of Germán Chub Choc by Mynor Padilla; and the gang-rapes of 11 Q’eqchi’ campesina women by roving groups of Guatemalan police, soldiers and private security guards during the January 17, 2007 violent eviction and wholescale destruction of their remote village of Lote Ocho, on traditional Mayan lands sought after for mining.

The Fenix mine was owned by Canadian company Skye Resources Inc. from 2004-2008. In 2008 Hudbay bought Skye Resources and later merged the company and its mine with Hudbay. Hudbay owned and operated the Fenix mine from 2008-2011.

Criminal trial and guilty plea of Hudbay security chief Mynor Padilla

Hudbay’s Guatemalan head of security Mynor Padilla sidestepped Guatemala’s notoriously corrupt legal system for three years, but finally, partly due to the Canadian lawsuits, he was eventually arrested and charged with murder. For several years more the Guatemalan legal system failed to hold him accountable. In January 2021, Mynor Padilla finally pled guilty to killing Adolfo Ich and shooting German Chub ([link removed]) .

May 2014 protest in Toronto coordinated by Mining Injustice Solidarity Network

Settlement finally provides hope to the Plaintiffs

In the October 2024 settlement agreement, all parties had agreed to a “quiet period” to allow for everyone, and most particularly the Plaintiffs and their families in Guatemala, to focus on getting on their lives. We are pleased to report that, to date, things have gone well in the post settlement period. The Plaintiffs and their families have begun to rebuild their lives, after their original suffering and losses, followed by the ordeal of their 14-year litigation.

Lessons for the future

The end of the quiet period means that the Plaintiffs, their lawyers and Rights Action, can now openly discuss the challenges and obstacles they confronted both in Canada and Guatemala, their successes in overcoming them, the lessons learned from this 14-year struggle, how they achieved a measure of justice and reparations, and how their lawsuits changed Canadian and international common law for the better.

Questions and more information
* Murray Klippenstein, Klippensteins Barristers & Solicitors, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.klippensteins.ca, +1-416-937-8634
* Cory Wanless, Phillips Barristers, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , +1-647-886-1914
* Grahame Russell, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.rightsaction.org, +1-416-807-4436

+++

Going forward, Rights Action will be involved in a range of work to tell the full story of the Hudbay lawsuits and the overlapping, intertwined Mynor Padilla criminal trial in Guatemala. This will include writing, participating in public forums, taking fact-finding delegations to Guatemala to meet with the plaintiffs and others involved in mining resistance struggles, and possible documentary film work.

The work will highlight serious obstacles and challenges we confronted, including violence and corruption, and highlight unresolved issues that both legal processes exposed. As always, the work will focus on the responsibilities of our governments, investment sectors and mining industry in terms of mining-related violences, harms and corruption occurring regularly around the world. For all the wrong reasons, there continues to be little to no political or media oversight in countries of the global north, including Canada and the U.S., let alone legal accountability in civil or criminal law.

Worsening crack-down against “harvest of empire” forced migrants
While demonization and criminalization of forced migrants and refugees – “harvest of empire”, as Juan Gonzalez, James Phillips and others have written about – are not new in the U.S., Rights Action is dismayed at the racist, extremist direction the illegal crackdown is taking under the current U.S. government.

Refugees and forced migrants are the harvest of our empire
Two Covert Action Magazine articles by James Phillips ([link removed])

Not surprisingly, this crackdown is also harming people Rights Action has long worked with and supported, as they struggle to get by in life after all the violence, destruction and harms “of empire” their families and communities suffered from in Guatemala.

Round-up in Louisiana of children of victims of World Bank and IDB’s Chixoy dam massacres
Rights Action, March 25, 2025 ([link removed])

El Salvador regime partners with U.S. government
Rights Action is dismayed at the privatized punitive jail system expanding across El Salvador, in direct partnership with the illegal deportations of the U.S. government. The U.S. and Canada maintain full political, economic and “security” relations with the repressive, corrupt “democratic allie” in power in El Salvador.

85,000 people jailed without judicial warrants in Salvadoran prisons where U.S. government illegally sending forced migrants
Article by Noah Bullock, Foreign Policy Magazine, Rights Action, April 14, 2025 ([link removed])

Screenshot, photo by Marvin Recinos, AFP via Getty Images (Foreign Policy Magazine, March 20, 2025)

Rights Action encourages folks, particularly in the U.S., to get involved locally across the country with any groups working in support of victims of the illegal round-ups, jailings and deportations. With respect to the situation of systemic repression, corruption and impunity in El Salvador, we recommend following the work of CRISTOSAL ([link removed]) , CISPES ([link removed]) , Share El Salvador ([link removed]) , CRISPAZ ([link removed]) .

Genocide in Palestine

Rights Action remains dismayed and enraged at the Western-backed (led by the U.S., including Canada) genocidal ethnical cleansing of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

From Guatemala to Gaza

Rights Action remembers the genocides and scorched earth massacres carried out by U.S. and Western-backed military regimes in Guatemala in the 1970s- 80s, directly targeting and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, a majority being indigenous. During the worst years (1978-1983), Britain, France, Germany, Israel and military regimes in Chile and Argentina also provided military aid, weapons and training to the Guatemalan regimes.

On Guatemala City walls
Names and photos of genocide victims family members are still looking for

Accountability for U.S., Canadian and Western complicity

As we try to do with our work in Guatemala and Honduras, Rights Action encourages folks across the U.S. and Canada to get involved with citizen and community driven education, organizing and activism to hold our countries legally and politically accountable for again supporting, enabling and legitimizing genocide.

Where your donations go

Here, a summary breakdown of where your funds go ([link removed]) when you donate to Rights Action. We recommend reviewing this summary in conjunction with reading this previous post about the Importance of Grassroots Funding ([link removed]) .

As of June 1, 2025, Rights Action has sent over $150,000 of your donations to community-led work and struggle confronting and resisting the cocktail of exploitation and repression, corruption and impunity that often characterize policies, actions and investments of U.S., Canadian E.U. governments, global companies, banks and investors, invariably in partnerships with local wealthy elites and partner groups.

*******

Highlighted e-newsletters & articles

Here, selected posts from 2025. In all our work, Rights Action has an understanding of the fundamental inter-connectedness - local to national to global / past to present to tomorrow - of most important work and struggle for human equality and well-being on this one planet that we share with all life forms.

The great tablecloth
(Pablo Neruda)

Let us sit down soon to eat with all those who haven't eaten. Let us spread great tablecloths, put salt in the lakes of the worlds, set up planetary bakeries, tables with strawberries in snow and a plate like the moon itself, from which we will all eat. For now, I ask no more than the justice of eating.

Remembering Berta Caceres, 9 years after her assassination
by Grahame Russell, March 3, 2025 ([link removed])

Trumpists Agitating To Coup Honduras
By Nate Bear, March 10, 2025 ([link removed])

North American tourism in Honduras: “A network of child sexual exploitation, human trafficking and other crimes”
Rights Action, March 27, 2025 ([link removed])

The 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine is alive and on steroids
By John Perry and Roger Harris, April 21, 2025 ([link removed])

Hazardous machinations of Canada’s mining elite in communities across Latin America
By Jennifer Moore, April 23, 2025 ([link removed])

Xinka people say a resounding, reverberating NO to Pan American Silver mining in Guatemala
By EarthWorks and MiningWatch Canada, May 13, 2025 ([link removed])

Yet another indigenous land defender killed near the Fenix mine in Guatemala resisting Canadian mining
Rights Action, June 6, 2025 ([link removed])

+++

“I, like you, love love, life, the sweet enchantment of things, the sky-blue landscape of January days. My blood swells and I laugh through eyes that have known the flow of tears. I believe the world is beautiful and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone. And that my veins do not end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, little things, countryside and bread, the poetry of all.”

Roque Dalton

+++

Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)

To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2

Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

*******
Please share and re-post this information
*******

More info: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.rightsaction.org
e-Newsletter: [link removed]
Previous e-Newsletters: [link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed] ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed] Facebook ([link removed])
[link removed] Twitter ([link removed])
[link removed] Website ([link removed])
[link removed] Instagram ([link removed])
[link removed] YouTube ([link removed])

============================================================
Copyright © 2025 Rights Action, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you are one of our subscriptor

Our mailing address is:
Rights Action
Box 50887
20091-0887
Washington, DC 0
USA
** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
** update subscription preferences ([link removed])
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
[link removed]