After less than a year of the indigenous environmental leader Sergio Rojas having been killed, Costa Rica is struck again with the murder on Monday, February 24, 2020, of Jerhy Rivera, in San Antonio de Terraba.
Ecological organizations, such as “FECON”, repudiates this new horrible crime and denounces the hypocrisy of the Costa Rican government, “which on the one hand, claims to be the champion of Human Rights, but on the other leaves public safety policies for protection of all citizens in a state of abandonment, especially forgetting the indigenous populations of our country,” declares Henrry Picado, President of the Ecological Federation (FECON).
Immediately upon hearing the news of the death of the indigenous leader Jerhy Rivera, the organization expressed its repudiation and highlights some other situations that have arisen. The Environmental Federation demands the state protection of indigenous territories against the “non-native usurpers” and their immediate eviction from these places that belong to the indigenous peoples.
It is also urgent that the murders of Sergio Rojas and Jerhy Rivera do not remain in impunity, the material and intellectual actors of these crimes must be investigated, found and severely punished. Also, we condemn the perverse intentions of journalistic reports that have been used against native-land defenders, encouraging violence against them. These pseudo-media outlets are direct accomplices of these murders. Channel 7, did not even accept the right to reply, after publishing several reports that criminalized the defense of its lands by indigenous comrades.
Finally, the called is upon the international community, requesting global solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Costa Rica, which for several decades are struggling to recover the land that by right and tradition belongs to them, in the absence of an impartial judicial system in the country that should uphold their rights, but does not, leaving them defenseless against the violent, racist, destructive, land-usurping groups that gobble-up our territory for greedy monetary gain.
