Áry Ojeasojavo Tembiapokatu
Áry Ojeasojavo Tembiapokatu is a non-governmental organisation founded in 2018 with bases in Paraguay in Asunción and in the administrative department of Amambay. It is an interdisciplinary group at the service of Indigenous peoples and the rural and urban working classes, looking to strengthen their organisational activities, especially those of women. It has the aim of strengthening and accompanying these peoples’ defence of their rights, as well as their care and protection of their lands, territories, knowledge, and ancestral practices.
It carries out activities related to training, consultancy, engagement and exchange, research-action, communication and public advocacy linked to gender and feminism, justice and socio-environmental education, defence of land and territory, safeguarding historical memory and strengthening peoples’ transmission of knowledge and practices.
Human rights defenders and journalists are facing significant insecurity, harassment and killings.
Land rights defenders have faced particularly violent repression. In 2012, one of the lead figures of the land rights movement, Mr Vidal Vega, former head of the Campesinos sin Tierra (Peasants without Land) and a key witness into the Curuguaty massacre, was assassinated in front of his family. According to the Paraguayan Human Rights Coordinator, between 1989 and 2013, 115 land rights defenders from campesino organisations were killed or forcefully disappeared.
