Mike Gatehouse

This report by Nasim Chatha for Truthout was first published on July 22 2017. You can read the original here. The new federal penitentiary in Santa Barbara, Honduras, occupies a strip of land between a highway and cloudy, forested hills. "El Pozo," or The Pit, as it's known, is surrounded by barbed wire and has two additional checkpoints beyond the...

The small town of Quedas do Iguaçu, in southern Brazil close to the border with Paraguay, awoke to the sound of helicopters on November 4 last year.  After eight months, a police investigation aimed at an alleged criminal conspiracy within the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) was about to come to fruition. Sixteen arrest warrants were issued - 14 of them against...

As peace activists, we have become too accustomed to share bad news. However, on this occasion I’m glad to be able to say that, while there are still many challenges, we are on the right path towards building peace in Colombia. The oldest insurgent group in the Americas, FARC-EP (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia- the People’s Army), no longer...

23 September 2017 Dear LAB Supporter and Friend, Apologies for the long hiatus since our last newsletter. We'll try to make them more regular in future. Brazil We’ve published a spate of articles on Brazil in recent months. In case you missed them, there were 15 articles in the extraordinary series by LAB Editor Sue Branford and Mauricio Torres, written for Mongabay and...

This is the final post in a series of four written for Christian Aid and LAB by distinguished journalists João Peres and Moriti Neto 4. Company policy: Divide and Rule MRN, or Mineração Rio do Norte, the bauxite mining company which dominates the extractive industry in Pará, improved the process of 'stakeholder mapping' in 2015, according to the company's financial report....

The Fórum Bem Viver (Good Life Forum) met earlier this month to bring together indigenous leaders, military police, a federal judge, television actors, musicians, journalists, scientists and activists from eight countries and 14 Brazilian states. The event, organized by the eco-cultural education nonprofit Rios de Encontro, utilized arts performances and workshops to seek common ground between participants regarding...

This is the third in a series of four blog-posts, written for Christian Aid and LAB by distinguished journalists João Peres and Moriti Neto 3. David vs Goliath one public document states that since 1995, the aluminium mining company MRN (Mineração Rio do Norte) has been transferring R$495,000 per year for the maintenance of the local unit of the Chico Mendes...