Since October of last year, the government has pointedly ignored a 60-page report from the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the human rights violation of the Maya of Belize. Now, the IACH, citing what it calls, "the exceptional circumstances of the present case where the state has not...(taken) any measures...to comply with its recommendations" has been forced to move on alone. That means ratifying its conclusions, re-stating the recommendations, and publicizing the report, which includes sending it to the general assembly of the OAS.
The report made much news last December when it first came to public attention. It strongly indicts the government for failing to recognize the communal property rights the Maya have to their traditional lands, when it granted logging concessions in the Toledo district. The report also found that the state violated the Maya's rights to equal protection before the law. The findings of this report and the broad recommendation that government, "delimit, demarcate and otherwise...protect the territory in which the Maya people have a communal property right." has proven to be an explosive assertion in Toledo where the issues of land and ethnicity are always on a hair trigger.
These are issues the Mayan Leaders Alliance hopes to adopt, as they launch a campaign to take this landmark judgment to the international donor community, basically, to embarrass the government of Belize for its record on indigenous rights. And while the Maya leaders will go to the international community in their own communities within the Toledo District, the idea of Maya land rights has caused ethnic rifts between Mayas who live mostly in the western area of the district, and Garifuna, East Indians and Creoles who live in the east.
In February, we visited Punta Gorda for a town meeting where much of that hostility was laid bare. Tonight we repeat that award winning story, part of a four part series on Maya land rights produced by Jules Vasquez that received the distinction of most outstanding entry the PAHO Health Awards earlier this month. You can link to the award winning story by clicking here: 'The Land is the Bank, who holds the Key?'
Despite a request to the IACH to publish the report, the government of Belize has never publicized the conclusions and recommendations. In fact the only time it has reached the public eyes has been on our website and you can find it here in our archive.
And while the IACH report is condemnatory of government's treatment of the Mayas, at the end it will do little more than embarrass the government, because GOB is not a signatory to the Inter-American court system so no punitive measures can be taken against the state. But as we noted, that won't stop the Maya leadership and its highly effective international attorneys from going into the towers of power to show the abuses of the government.