Jo-Marie Burt

‘Dramatic setback’: Will Peru’s new amnesty law put justice out of reach? Survivors of Peru’s internal armed conflict fear a new amnesty law will shield military and police from accountability.

“A dramatic setback.” The Schar School's @jomaburt.bsky.social breaks down Peru’s new amnesty law and how it could derail justice for human rights abuses.

She shares insights with Al Jazeera: www.aljazeera.com/features/lon...

Judge Removes Youngkin’s University Board Picks The ruling in favor of state Democrats will likely be appealed.

“When you peel back all the connections, it’s hard to imagine this is not orchestrated. How can faculty feel safe, not just to exercise their academic freedom, but safe in their personhood, when you have extremist board members siccing their orgs on us.”
— Bethany Letiecq, @aaupmason.bsky.social

Now That They’re Free, Venezuelan Men Want the World to Know What They Endured in CECOT Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration say they endured months of physical and mental abuse inside a Salvadoran prison. Though happy to be home, they say the fact that they were released ...

NEW: We interviewed nine Venezuelan men who were sent to CECOT by the Trump administration.

Some said their feelings about what happened were still raw.

All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment.

“.. At no point in the unfolding Epstein scandal has Trump focused on the young victims of these heinous criminals. .. The president has shown no concern for anything other than protecting himself.”

@rexhuppke.bsky.social @usatoday.com
www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Ruth Lopez, Cristosal lawyer who was arrested by the Bukele regime last May, remains imprisoned. I’m told by Cristosal colleagues that her whereabouts are unknown and her lawyers have been unable to see her. She is, effectively, disappeared.

Exclusive: El Salvador rights group flees Bukele's deepening crackdown El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's drive to consolidate his grip on power and crack down on critics and humanitarian organizations has forced a leading human rights organization to suspend operations in the country and go into exile, the group told Reuters.

Today the human rights organization Cristosal announces that it is ceasing operations in El Salvador due to the climate of repression and intimidation imposed by the Bukele regime, which has now definitively crossed the rubicon into dictatorship. www.reuters.com/world/americ...

As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas

The United States government is no longer able to protect us from real hazards, such as flash floods, because it’s shifting funds to fake hazards, such as a non-existent immigrant crime wave. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/u...

#30dejunio
Hoy conmemoramos a más de 200,000 víctimas asesinadas y 45,000 desaparecidas durante el Conflicto Armado Interno.

Este día también es un llamado a la memoria crítica, al rechazo de la militarización y a la búsqueda de #justicia.

Final vote. 50-50. VP breaks the tie.

One single GOP Senator could have stopped this abomination. Saved millions of parents from watching their child go hungry. Saved the lives destroyed when Medicaid disappears.

They will all live forever with the horror of this bill.

CC favorece al general Benedicto Lucas y anula el juicio por Genocidio Ixil La Corte de Constitucionalidad avala por mayoría el cambio de tribunal ordenado por la Sala de Mayor Riesgo en el caso contra el militar acusado de delitos contra los deberes de la humanidad y desapar...

En un perverso recuerdo de la anulación de la condena a Ríos Montt por genocidio en 2013, la CC anula todo lo actuado—mas de 100 audiencias—del juicio contra Benedicto Lucas García, exgeneral acusado tb de #genocidio. Impunidad tu nombre es #Guatemala.
prensacomunitaria.org/2025/06/cc-f...

As the shortest kid in school, I was an easy target for bullies. When I was about eight, I befriended a kind teenager wh When the KKK Murdered My Childhood Friend | Robert Reich

61 years ago today, the Klan murdered three civil rights workers in Mississippi. One of them was a childhood friend. I'd like to share what he meant to me. https://youtu.be/u-kv3wdqqNo?si=Zc3Uh-CJOcODt-RW

American Spring? How nonviolent protest in the US is accelerating Contrary to conventional wisdom, anti-Trump protests this year have dwarfed 2017 in size, and they have been extraordinarily peaceful.

American Spring? How nonviolent protest in the US is accelerating wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer...

Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

Sen. Padilla pushed to ground, handcuffed for demanding DHS not lie Forcibly removing a sitting US senator, as they opposed the president's immigration policy, is a part of a broader slide.

A DHS spokesperson defended the detainment, accusing Sen. Padilla of failing to properly identify himself during Sec. Kristi Noem's press conference.

But multiple videos show Padilla clearly identifying himself as a senator.

State Dept. Imposes Sanctions on International Criminal Court Judges

Luz Ibáñez is one of the ICC magistrates absurdly sanctioned by the US government for investigating US personnel. As a prosecutor in her native #Peru, she helped convict Abimael Guzman, the feared leader of Shining Path.She has more cojones than Rubio will ever have.
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/u...

Indigenous Women Survivors of Guatemala’s Rape Camps Seek Justice Forty years after surviving state violence, Maya Achi women return to court to demand justice, challenging a long legacy of impunity for crimes against humanity.

‼️ Today ‼️

🇬🇹 A verdict is expected in the second case brought by the Maya Achi women, survivors of sexual violence during Guatemala’s armed conflict.

WOLA Senior Fellow @jomaburt.bsky.social, with Paulo Estrada and Keily Colíndres, break it down 👇
🔗 nacla.org/indigenous-w...

"Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power ... With that done, power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives. They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals."
trib.al/oyBvPkF

The 35 richest Republican members of Congress have a net worth of $2.5 billion.

They stand to gain from the GOP budget's tax cuts that disproportionately help the rich.

Meanwhile, they're cutting Medicaid and food assistance for millions of their constituents.

🇬🇹 In 2022, Maya Achi women won a landmark case for wartime sexual violence. Now they seek justice against 3 more accused. A May 30 verdict looms.

✍️ WOLA senior fellow @jomaburt.bsky.social joins Paulo Estrada & Keily Colíndres to break it down in NACLA.

🔗 nacla.org/indigenous-w...

HASSAN: What is habeas corpus?

NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country

HASSAN: That's incorrect

When the Executive Defies the Judiciary: How Federal Courts Can Enforce Their Orders Without the Marshals Federal courts possess a number of tools to ensure the U.S. government is held responsible for failing to enforce or execute court orders.

What happens if the Executive tells the Marshals to ignore a court order? Steve Hirsch, John Hill, and Christie Wentworth argue that courts have tools—and a duty—to respond. 👇

#RuleOfLaw #SeparationOfPowers #USMS

www.justsecurity.org/113218/feder...

Happy Mother's Day. It's a moral outrage that we're the only industrialized country without paid family and medical leave.

Grisly Peru mining murders spotlight 'gold curse' in the Andes Peruvian mining sector worker Frank Monzón was aware of the risks, but the lure of gold deep in the Andean rock of northern Pataz province outweighed the danger. Now he and 12 others are dead in one of the country's worst mining massacres.

El #Peru de Dina Boluarte y el Congreso que la sostiene @wola-org.bsky.social www.reuters.com/world/americ...

13 Workers Found Killed at Gold Mine in Peru

#Peru In a country run by a Congress that is beholden to illicit economic actors, that cares little for democracy for ordinary citizens, the result is lawlessness, violence, and loss of human life. Boluarte, their feckless puppet, is also complicit. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/w...

THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION WASHINGTON, DC 20202 May 5, 2025 Dr. Alan Garber Office of the President Harvard University Massachusetts Hall Cambridge, MA 02138 Dr. Garber, The Federal Government has a sacred responsibility to be a wise and important steward of American taxpayer dollars. Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion dollar endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these "students" come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public? Harvard University has made a mockery of this country's higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It had scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing "remedial math" program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this "acclaimed university"? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected? Harvard has even been embroiled in humiliating plagiarism scandals, exposed clearly and plainly in the media, with respect to your then…

running the institution in a totally chaotic way. Harvard alumnus and highly successful hedge fund manager Bill Ackman noted that, under her leadership, Harvard has become "a political advocacy organization for one party." Ackman has called for the resignation of Pritzker, concluding that the "[t)he mismanagement here is Penny Pritzker" and noting that any serious corporation would have removed her after a litany of recent failings and the fact that, incredibly, "Harvard is not in a good financial position." According to Ackman, one of the world's foremost finance experts, Harvard's so-called S53 billion endowment is "massively overstated as far as what it's really worth," and Harvard has irresponsibly taken out $8 billion in debt. If this is true, it is concerning evidence of Harvard's disastrous mismanagement, indicating an urgent need for massive reform-not continued taxpayer investment. If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy. At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our Nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates. But Harvard has betrayed this ideal. Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court's ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans. The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard's consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the fede…

Federal Agencies. The Administration's priorities have not changed and today's letter marks the end of new grants for the University. These requests will advance the best interests of Harvard University, so it can reclaim its status as a respected educational institution for the future leaders of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Sincerely, Linda E. McMahon Secretary of Education

🚨🚨 Deranged letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon to Harvard’s president, cutting off federal funding for any new grants.

Worth reading in full. It is NUTS.

The Alien Enemies Act: Annotated - JSTOR Daily Confused about the oft-mentioned Alien Enemies Act? This explainer, with links to free peer-reviewed scholarship, may help clear things up.

Xenophobia in the United States: an annotated history by Liz Tracey

The reservoir of illiberalism in the US is deep as fuck

daily.jstor.org/the-alien-en...

BREAKING: A Trump-appointed judge has barred the administation from removing migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, saying Trump's invocation of that law in the context of Tren de Aragua was illegal. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

WOLA WEBINAR WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2025 2:00 - 3:30PM EDT REGISTER ON ZOOM NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE THE WASHINGTON OFFICE ON LATIN AMERICA AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE PRESENT: LESSONS FROM LATIN AMERICA AS THE UNITED STATES RECKONS WITH ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE Speakers: MERCEDES DORETTI Executive Director Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team JUAN E. MÉNDEZ Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence Washington College of Law, American University MARCELA TURATI Investigative Journalist MORE INFORMATION & RSVP: www.wola.org/events Moderated by: KATE DOYLE National Security Archive

Final reminder that this virtual discussion of enforced disappearance in the USA is today at 2PM EDT.

We're overwhelmed by the interest; the panelists are going to be great. If you can't join live, it will be on YouTube later.

Event: bit.ly/apr-30-disap...
Register: bit.ly/apr-30-lessons

#CasoGerardi
A 27 años del asesinato de Monseñor Gerardi, la captura y deportación de Darío Morales García —exespecialista del EMP— reaviva la exigencia de justicia. El sistema de justicia enfrenta una gran prueba: ¿está listo para garantizarla?

#Actualidad A propósito de la deportación y captura de Darío Morales García, se reproduce la siguiente nota de Inforpress Centroamericana, de 2009. Morales García tendrá audiencia el 29 de abril a las 8am.

elobservadorgt.org/2025/04/29/c...

📷Impunidad y redes ilícitas. Fundación Myrna Mack