Continuing the legal roller coaster of decisions made regarding the land rights of the Maya people in Toledo district of southern Belize, the Court of Appeal has recently re-affirmed the Maya people’s rights to collective land ownership throughout southern Belize.
Punta Gorda, Toledo District-
The Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcaldes Association are once again turning to the courts to hold the government of Belize to its responsibilities and to find the government in contempt of orders issued by the Supreme Court in the Maya Land Rights cases of 2007 and 2010.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has issued a statement condemning the State of Belize for violating the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Toledo district.
The Commission has been closely following the illegal extraction and destruction of natural resources conducted by foreign companies with support from the government of Belize since 2004, when they issued a recommendation that the government “delimit, demarcate and title the [Mayan] territory” and until that has happened, abstain from any projects that might affect these lands.
After traveling almost 2,000 miles to attend a hearing with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington D.C. to speak out on the human rights violations against Maya peoples in Southern Belize, on March 13th, spokeswoman of the Maya Leaders Alliance Cristina Coc was informed that the hearing had been cancelled at the last minute; representatives of the government of Belize had failed to show.
Traditional Maya leaders reported that Texas-based US Capital Energy has made numerous attempts to buy support for their oil drilling project on Maya lands including those inside the Sarstoon-Temash National Park in Southern Belize by infiltrating the Maya leaders’ traditional forms of governance. They declared the the company is blatantly undermining and disrespecting Indigenous governance, in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
On January 26-27, 2013, Cultural Survival held an exchange between Q'eqchi Maya communities in Belize and Guatemala to talk about strategies for implementing the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and how community radio can be used as a tool for doing so. Members of community radio stations in Guatemala teamed up with the Defensoria Q’eqchi, an Indigenous rights law organization based in El Estor, Isabal, Guatemala and the Indigenous environmental management organization SATIIM to visit four communities outside the Sarstoon Temash N
By Gregory Ch’oc (Q'eqchi')
Last week, Global Response partner SATIIM (Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management) reported that the Texas based US Capital Energy company has returned to the Sarstoon Temash National Park in Belize, without explanation or permission from the Indigenous communities nor from SATIIM, who manage the national park.
For Belize’s Mayas, good news was immediately followed by bad. In late June, the Chief Justice ruled that the Mayas of all 33 villages in the Toledo district have customary land tenure rights dating back to their residence in pre-colonial times. The ruling specified that the claimants’ rights to customary land tenure “were not extinguished by formal distribution of leases and titles by colonial settlers or any such law or act” and that they have the right “to seek redress in the courts for any breach.”
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