PBI expresses solidarity with people affected by Tropical Storm Eta

Photo: Erick Alexander Cano Roque/Prensa Comunitaria.

On November 5, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted: “We express our solidarity with the people affected by the tropical storm Eta in the country and we continue to monitor the situation in the most affected areas.”

Global News reports that torrential rains pummeled Honduras on November 5 damaging hundreds, if not thousands, of homes. Reuters adds that a UNICEF representative in Honduras has estimated that 1.5 million children will be affected.

Reuters also reports that “around 100 people were killed by a landslide” when the storm hit the village of Queja in the central Guatemalan region of Alta Verapaz and “mudslides swallowed around 150 houses.”

The PBI-Guatemala accompanied Verapaz Union of Campesino Organizations (UVOC), an Indigenous and peasant organization dedicated to the defence and promotion of access to land for peasants, has tweeted that Eta has left 50 Mayan Q’eqchi’ families homeless on the ancestral territory they seek to recover after a series of dispossessions, including by the Military Zone 21 army base built on their lands in 1968.

UVOC adds: “Resistance residents of Chicoyou have made it known that they need support with food, clothing, medicine, supplies and sheets to rebuild their homes.”

Rights Action has tweeted: “Hurricane Eta brings torrential rains, mudslides & flooding to Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Guatemala & Nicaragua, further devastating lives of already impoverished & discriminated Indigenous & campesino communities.”

Rights Action, which has worked in Guatemala for more than 25 years, has tweeted about their Emergency Fund that “channels your funds directly to dozens of community organizations implementing their own human rights, territorial, environmental, democracy and justice defense struggles and emergency relief projects.”