URGENT ACTION: Canadian Resort Developers Charge Garifuna Woman

This afternoon at approximately 4 pm, Honduran police surrounded a land recuperation effort in the Garifuna community of Guadalupe, municipality of Santa Fe, Colon. The police detained Medeline David, a Garifuna woman between 25 and 28 years old, who has been very active in recuperating Garifuna land that has been stolen by Americans and Canadians, to build large-scale tourism projects including gated communities, resorts, a cruise ship dock. She was also beaten up in the process of being detained.

Medeline is being accused of usurpation by a Canadian company, Carivida owned by Patrick Daniel Forseth, who illegally purchased the land. Not only is the land inside a communally-owned title from the early 1900s but its also a piece of land in the most recently granted (and significantly reduced) Guadalupe land title from 1998.

The land recuperation processes in Trujillo Bay in six Garifuna communities are being led by Garifuna youth, many of which have been DEPORTED from the United States. They arrive back to their communities and find their land being stolen by Canadians and Americans illegally purchasing Garifuna land for their vacation homes. The main "developer" in the region in Canadian Porn King Randy Jorgensen and there are various other Canadian and American developers like CARIVIDA who are flooding to the area to convert it into a Honduran cancun. This has led to repression, criminalization, and the robbery of land from the Garifuna communities in the area.

Please write the Canadian Embassy about Medeline's case and express your concern that Canadian businesses are stealing Garifuna land and criminalizing those that defend it.