Breaking Green
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Breaking Green
International Petition Filed on Behalf of COP City Protester Killed by Police with Anthony Enriquez
Authorities claim the had fired a weapon at police, but there is strong forensic evidence that the protester was seated with hands up and had not fired a weapon.
Many other peaceful protesters as well as those providing mutual aid and bond support have been charged in a far-reaching prosecution that has labelled many as Domestic Terrorists.
On April 5th, two organizations, including Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and Southern Center for Human Rights together with the University of Dayton Human Rights Center filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calling for an investigation into the killing of Manuel Esteban Páez Terán, also known as Tortuguita.
On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Anthony Enriqez of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights.
Anthony Enriqez is an attorney working to reduce mass incarceration in the United States by exposing and stopping human rights abuses in the criminal legal and immigration systems. As the Vice President of U.S. Advocacy and Litigation at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, he leads a team of advocates fighting for accountability for state-sponsored racial discrimination, torture, and extrajudicial killings. He has over a decade of expertise in child refugee protection, immigrants’ rights, and anti-detention advocacy and litigation.
Anthony graduated from New York University School of Law in 2013 and clerked for a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
This podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.
Breaking Green is made possible by tax deductible donations from people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights and expose false solutions.
Donate securely online here
Or simply text GIVE to 716-257-4187
Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. On Breaking Green. We will talk with activists and experts to examine the intertwined issues of social, ecological and economic injustice. We will also explore some of the more outrageous proposals to address climate and environmental crises that are falsely being sold as green. I am your host, steve Taylor.
Steve Taylor:On January 18th of last year, a land defender protesting the raising of an urban forest to build a police training mega-complex known as Cop City was killed by a hail of bullets fired by police in Atlanta, georgia. Authorities claim that the protester shot at police, but there is strong forensic evidence that the protester shot at police, but there is strong forensic evidence that the protester was seated with hands up and had not fired a weapon. Since, many other peaceful protesters, as well as those providing mutual aid and bond support, have been charged in a far-reaching prosecution that has labeled many as domestic terrorists. On April 5th, two organizations, including Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and Southern Center for Human Rights, together with University of Dayton Human Rights Center, filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calling for an investigation into the killing of Manuel Pais Turan, also known as Tortuguita.
Steve Taylor:On this episode of Breaking Green, we will talk with Anthony Enriquez of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights. Anthony Enriquez is an attorney working to reduce mass incarceration in the United States by exposing and stopping human rights abuses in the criminal, legal and immigration systems. As the Vice President of US Advocacy and Litigation at Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, he leads a team of advocates fighting for accountability for state-sponsored racial discrimination, torture and extrajudicial killings. He has over a decade of experience in child refugee protection, immigrants' rights and anti-detention advocacy and litigation. Anthony graduated from New York University School of Law in 2013 and clerked for a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York. Anthony Enriquez, welcome to Breaking Green.
Anthony Enriquez:Thanks so much, steve, it's great to be here.
Steve Taylor:For those listeners who may not be familiar with the case, could you give us an overview of who Tortuguita was and how they died?
Anthony Enriquez:Yes, I could. Tortuguita is the first environmental and human rights defender in history to be killed by United States law enforcement. Tato Orquesta was killed by the Georgia state police while sitting cross-legged and engaged in a peaceful protest of plans by Georgia officials to destroy an urban forest and construct in its place a militarized police training facility, known as Cop City, colloquially. Alongside community members and civil society activists, Tortuguita sought to raise awareness of the harms that would be caused by this environmental destruction and of the racially discriminatory policing that Atlanta and Georgia police engaged in. Atlanta is a city where Black people constitute 50% of the population but make up 90% of arrests and 88% of police killings.
Steve Taylor:And one of the elements was is that this cop city? There was going to be a raising or destruction of an urban forest? Could you talk about the concerns with that regarding, I guess the disprop stop Cop City brings together many intersecting human rights movements.
Anthony Enriquez:It really called the attention of environmental defenders who wanted to stop the destruction of an urban area green space that was located in predominantly black neighborhoods. It was located in predominantly Black neighborhoods. It brought together people who were concerned over increases in police violence, especially in the wake of racial justice protests related to the murder of Judge George Floyd and others in 2020. And it's also brought together people who are concerned over suppression of civic space in the United States. Civic space is really a term that means all of us have the right to assemble to peaceably speak our minds and to petition our government to address our grievances. But recent police activity, recent legislative proposals, have really been aimed at reducing and even eliminating civic space, criminalizing our ability to speak out in defense of the causes that matter to us. In defense of the causes that matter to us.
Anthony Enriquez:So Cop City and the movement to stop Cop City is really occurring at the intersection of all three of these movements. Now you've asked what were some of the concerns specifically related to the disproportionate effects that the destruction of the South River Forest could have on communities of color. The South River Forest, which is the land that the city of Atlanta proposed raising in order to construct Cop City has a really long history in our country of being a space of racial violence. It was previously occupied by Creek Indians who were, as people famously know, were ejected from that territory in the Trail of Tears. They began to be displaced in 1821 and today now live largely in Oklahoma.
Anthony Enriquez:This community, actually members of the Creek community, have actually come back to Atlanta to express solidarity with the Stop Cop City activists and their continued struggle for racial justice.
Anthony Enriquez:Of course, another element of this is that the location of the South River Forest, right in an urban area of Atlanta, really abuts neighborhoods that are predominantly Black. This was therefore a space that provided people with environmental benefits of trees, of rivers. You know, those types of open and wild areas are associated with health benefits, both physical and mental health, for people who have access to that type of environmental space, for people who have access to that type of environmental space, and they also help reduce air pollution in neighborhoods that have really suffered a lot of the consequences of environmental degradation. So this particular land really, as I said, has been a site of a lot of racial injustice, and that's part of what the Stop Cop.
Steve Taylor:City movement is intended to do is to finally put a stop to that racial injustice, very aggressive and, I believe, characterized these peaceful protesters as domestic terrorists right off the bat. Could you give us a little bit of background on that?
Anthony Enriquez:Absolutely. The movement to criminalize the Stop Cop City protesters has been aggressive and really has manipulated portions of the law that were intended to address harms completely unrelated to what the protesters are really a wide variety of people associated with several different focuses on human rights. Again, we talked about racial justice, about movements to reduce policing as the catch-all solution for social ills, about movements to preserve green space within our cities, and so, as a consequence, the people who make up this movement really have different functions. A portion of the Stop Cop City protesters, for instance, participated in the creation of bail funds to help bail out peaceful protesters who had been wrongly arrested for speaking their minds. A portion of the Stop Cop City protesters are not what we would think of as traditional protesters, but really are people who are concerned citizens of their neighborhoods and have gone to city council meetings to speak up against the destruction of forest land in their backyards. And a portion of Stop Cup City protesters were people who were really dedicated to environmental defense, who called themselves land defenders and who, in vindication of that defense, went and actually camped out in the South River Forest and occupied some of the trees there to really draw attention, through peaceful, non-violent, civil disobedience to the harms that the Stop Cop City facility was going to visit upon the committee the land defenders. That was the group to which Tortuguita belonged, and that was the context in which Tortuguita was killed while he was living in a tent within the forest. Living in a tent within the forest, but the that was originally passed in 2020 as a reaction to the killing spree that Dylan Roof engaged in when he entered a traditionally Black church and killed parishioners there.
Anthony Enriquez:Shortly after that happened, in 2020, the Georgia legislature passed a domestic terrorism law that enhanced criminal penalties for people who used violence or coercion to influence a government policy.
Anthony Enriquez:Essentially and this is a really unfortunately sad example of what happens when you ask the law to solve a problem like hate that exists or racism that exists, oftentimes what happens is the tools that people think will be used, that people trust will be used in favor of oppressed people, get used by the state to actually oppress people further.
Anthony Enriquez:And so a law that was, uh, supposedly passed in order to punish and ensure that violent killing sprees that were when the police are engaging in killings of Black people effort by Georgia authorities to criminalize the ideology behind this movement, and what I mean is Georgia authorities filed racketeering charges against what they alleged were participants in a conspiracy to use violent vandalism against the state. So people, for instance, who were running those bail funds that we talked about, people who were providing mutual aid, giving someone a place to stay, some food those people were arrested as members of a violent conspiracy. Now what's interesting is, if you look at the indictments, the conspiracy is alleged to have begun the day that George Floyd was murdered, in 2020, which was a year before the Atlanta City Council even authorized the destruction of the South River Forest to construct Cop City.
Anthony Enriquez:Essentially, what the state is saying is people who are participating in protests against the killings of Black people. The disproportionate killings of Black people by United States police are engaged in a criminal conspiracy and over 60 people have been indicted on these currently pending conspiracy charges to punish people for their beliefs in racial equity and in accountability for police for their killings for police for their killings, but people running bail funds are being arrested under domestic terrorism charges or conspiracy charges.
Steve Taylor:Obviously, it is meant to chill. I know that your petition deals with this and we want to talk about that later what you hope to accomplish but it is really chilling how aggressive and the theory that the state is using to brand people terrorists, and it does seem to be branding or attacking an ideology. So let's talk a little bit about Tortuguita, who was violently killed by police who was participating in these protests. I would hope that you'd be able to run us through a bit what happened, and then I want to talk about all the evidence that goes against the official narrative. But first, what happened to Tortuguita?
Anthony Enriquez:So I'd like to start by emphasizing not Tortuguita's murder, but Tortuguita's life. That's part of what our petition aims to do is to really counter the narrative that Georgia authorities have put out, that this person's life can just be reduced to one day and one violent act. Tortuguita, who used they-them pronouns, identified as non-binary, was a citizen of Venezuela, but a lawful permanent resident of the United States. He had attended college in Florida in the United States and, by all accounts, was truly dedicated to nonviolence and to caring for his fellow human beings. Tortuguita graduated magna cum laude from Florida State University in the United States in 2021. They had a degree in psychology and they were truly dedicated to nonviolence. They were building low income housing for people who had been affected by a hurricane. Tortita was also a trained medic and was really renowned for putting others first, almost to a fault. There was, for instance, a remembrance written about Togita by a reporter who had spent time in the forest with them in December 2022, who described them as curious, engaging, earnest, educated, self-aware. Engaging, earnest, educated, self-aware, well-read and very funny, and they really quoted Tortuguita as saying the right kind of resistance is peaceful. We're not going to beat them at violence. They're very, very good at violence, but we went through nonviolence. That's really the only way we can win. We don't want more people to die and we don't want Atlanta to turn into a war zone. So part of what our petition seeks to do is to really vindicate Tortuguita's memory, is to really let the world know that this was a young person full of promise. This was a young person who was dedicated to care for their fellow human beings, and a young person who was going to make a difference had their life not been snuffed out so tragically.
Anthony Enriquez:As far as what happened, well, people first started coming to the South River Forest in Atlanta and identifying as forest defenders in late 2021. Was a group of defenders who started camping there, establishing tree houses in the canopy of the forest and building temporary structures about 15 feet off the ground. And in January 28th of 2022, members of local police the DeKalb County Police made their first forays into the forest, where they encountered some of these protesters who were really described as chanting and waving banners, making loud and boisterous marches really what we think of as the epitome of non-violent protests. And the Georgia authorities responded to that with violence. So in May of 2022, they first entered the forest and arrested eight of the forest defenders, typically on charges of trespassing.
Anthony Enriquez:In December of 2022, a multi-agency task force convened by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation raided the forest and arrested 12 people and charged them with domestic terrorism. And then we come to January 2023, where, early in the month, the Georgia governor, brian Kemp, gave a report, an interview with a reporter, where he vowed to maintain the aggressive approach and said the only response we will give to intimidation and violence is swift and exact justice. And so you really see the authorities really struggling to create violence and to create this narrative that the forest defenders were engaging in violence, when all evidence shows it was the police that actually escalated the violence. And it was the morning of January 18th 2023, when the Georgia State Patrol and the DeKalb County police conducted another raid on the forest. They found Tortuguita in their tent and they shot Tortuguita with at least 14 bullets, producing over 50 wounds, and that was how Tortuguita died tragically.
Steve Taylor:Yeah, so it was shocking to hear that when the report had suggested or asserted that Tortuguita had fired a weapon and injured a police officer and that's why they had this barrage of fire, could you tell us what you know about the evidence that Tortuguita did not fire, or what you know about these autopsies? Because if what I am saying is true, that's very disturbing.
Anthony Enriquez:So there were two autopsies conducted. The first was by a state agency, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office, and the second was by an independent investigator that the family commissioned investigator that the family commissioned and both of those autopsies found. For instance, the state's autopsy found that soot, stippling, searing and gunpowder residue were not found in association with any of the clothing that Tortuguitita was wearing. And the forensic pathologist who was hired by the family also concluded in his investigation that the injuries to Tortita's hands showed evidence from wounds in both palms, fingers and forearms, suggesting that their hands were raised, that wounds to their legs, including broken bones to the tibia and fibula from shotgun missiles, suggested that Tortuguita was seated cross-legged at the time of their shooting, with their left leg crossed over their right, and confirming what the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office had concluded was that there was no gunpowder residue found on Tortita's clothing or body.
Steve Taylor:How has the state responded to these findings or to requests for information regarding this?
Anthony Enriquez:One of the most frustrating things for Tortuguita's family and friends is that the state has continually hidden or obfuscated evidence, has said that it can't release evidence of the investigation that it conducted into Tortuita's killing because they have a currently pending criminal case against several of Tortuita's co-activists and protesters, several of Tortita's co-activists and protesters, and it's you know, the one doesn't really have much to do with the other. It really just seems like a strategy to avoid any type of public accountability for this police killing.
Steve Taylor:What about the possibility of friendly fire officer and officer?
Anthony Enriquez:It's not unique that in police killing situations or in situations where police have been injured, it's often the police themselves, who typically have access to the weapons do end up shooting or hurting themselves. Do end up shooting or hurting themselves.
Steve Taylor:The interesting thing about this situation is that the Georgia State.
Anthony Enriquez:Patrol that ended up. The officers that did kill Manuel don't typically use body camera footage, or at least that's what the state is telling us.
Anthony Enriquez:No body camera footage exists from the officer who actually shot Tortita to death. So the investigative report in Tortita's death stated that no body camera footage exists because the Georgia State Patrol the agencies whose officers killed Tokita don't uniformly use them. But the Cab County police officers, who were also present that morning, are equipped with body cameras and one of those cameras picked up footage of an officer saying, quote is this target practice? And man, you fucked your own officer up. So this really suggests that an injured officer had been shot by another officer.
Steve Taylor:If it was an officer involved shooting. It seems as if they may even be panicking a bit and just really overcharging. I mean, does overcharging activists, does that play into this at all, or am I just coming up with some sort of idea of a conspiracy here? But it seems to me like they're almost in a panic to suppress.
Anthony Enriquez:Well, it's ironic that you use the words conspiracy theory, because that's exactly what the Georgia authorities are charging activists with conspiring to violently overthrow either plans to raise the forest or plans to construct Cop City raise the forests or plans to construct cop city. But if you really look at the combination of all of the actions criminalizing sleeping in a hammock in a forest, saying that that is domestic terrorism, criminalizing people who are simply setting up charitable bond funds to help people be released from pretrial detention while their criminal cases are ongoing you start to see the extraordinary pressure that as a whole, atlanta authorities and Georgia authorities are putting on this movement. But I think it's important to also bear in mind that it isn't Georgia alone. The federal US Department of Homeland Security also referred to Atlanta activists as domestic violent extremists in a public terrorism bulletin. So there is a real fellowship between state authorities and federal authorities here that together are working to really restrict the use of civic space for nonviolent civil disobedience or peaceful protest.
Steve Taylor:Anthony, could your work here be considered terrorist or part of that terrorist conspiracy? I mean, according to the state's theory.
Anthony Enriquez:It's an interesting question. You know, the really chilling thing about the state statute is that it doesn't have many bounds that have been articulated. We've been seeing the state try to stretch it as far as possible. We've been seeing the state say you know, one of the elements of conspiracy is a plan to have an intention to carry out a criminal enterprise. And in one sense, if the state's saying everybody who supports those who are peacefully protesting, racial violence and police violence are part of that intention, then yes, it seems that the state's theory of criminal behavior really doesn't have any outward bounds, right?
Steve Taylor:So what is the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights?
Anthony Enriquez:The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an independent body in the Western Hemisphere that's part of an organization called the Organization of American States. It was really set up as a cross-national cooperation mechanism for countries within the Western Hemisphere to coordinate essential policies that would help them function better for their mutual prosperity. The Organization of American States actually got together in the late 1940s to pass the world's first general declaration of human rights. So this was before, for instance, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that was passed by the UN.
Anthony Enriquez:Many people say that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is something like a bill of rights that we have in the US Constitution for the world. But the American Declaration was actually first, actually preceded that and really seeded it in important ways. It was really the first international human rights instrument to say people don't have rights just by virtue of the fact that they're a citizen of the state. They have rights by virtue of the fact that they're people, that they're human beings, and there are certain human rights that every state is obligated to respect. And so the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights was set up about a decade or so after that to really examine charges and allegations of human rights violations by states that are participating in the Organization of American States.
Anthony Enriquez:You have to remember the context that these organizations were birthed in was one in which there were many non-democratic regimes that were in charge of countries across the Americas, where there were really credible stories of military juntas disappearing people, of torturing people, of genocides of indigenous peoples, and so this was the commission was really playing an essential role in trying to build public pressure to put a stop to these things. Today, the Inter-American Commission is composed of seven independent experts from countries across the Americas who receive petitions and allegations of human rights abuses that have been carried out by countries that are members of the Organization of American States, who evaluate them and really decide what did or did not happen and can then suggest to states of measures that a state can take to bring human rights abusers to accountability or to provide some type of redress for victims of human rights abuses.
Steve Taylor:So tell us about the petition that has been filed, and I guess maybe it would be right to say in Tortiquita's behalf, or in the behalf of these forest defenders and others who are being prosecuted under this overly broad terrorist rubric.
Anthony Enriquez:So our petition really is narrowly focused on Tortuguita and on Tortuguita's mother and on the violation of their human rights. That being said, that violation occurred within the context of suppression of political speech, suppression of civic space, and that includes the prosecution of Tortuguita's fellow protesters and land offenders. So the story of what's happening to them really plays an essential part in understanding how and why Tortuita's human rights were violated. But our petition presents this story within the larger context of the movement to stop Cop City and within the larger context of protests against racialized killings by police in the United States that have occurred since 2020. The protest that is, of course, the killings much predate that date, and our petition really lays out the ways in which Georgia authorities and federal authorities have violated the human rights of Tortuguita and of Tortuguita's mother. Some of those violations include the right to life Obviously, when the state kills someone, that's a violation of their right to life. But they also include human rights like violation of the right to special protection for human rights defenders, which is a human right that the inter-american commission and the inter-american court have found is part of the American Declaration of Human Rights. They include the right to truth in investigation of human rights abuses. They also include the right to dignity for survivors of victims survivors or victims of human rights abuses or of their family as well, Because when we talk about the way that the state has tried to malign Tortuguita's memory, that's inflicting an ongoing human rights abuse against their mother, against their family, people who care deeply about Tortuguita and who now have to face all of the questioning and the recrimination and the insults that people in their life are telling them about their brother, their child, their family member.
Anthony Enriquez:There's also an aspect that talks about the fact that the state of Georgia tried to introduce Tortuguita. In their tent was a diary that talked about all of the ways in which they were fighting for racial justice, for environmental justice, and the state of Georgia, after killing Tortuguita, took that diary without a warrant and then entered it into evidence to say this is evidence of a criminal conspiracy to violently overthrow the Georgia government. And our petition talks about how the state has really used torture to obtain evidence and then introduce it into a criminal proceeding. That's a human right that can't be violated is the protection against torture. And so statements that are obtained through torture in this case through killing that are then later used to prosecute other people. That's an ongoing human rights violation that Georgia authorities are engaged in right now.
Steve Taylor:So you filed the petition in April. Has there been a response? What's the likelihood of it being reviewed? What's the status?
Anthony Enriquez:The petition has been acknowledged by the commission, meaning they've received it and they've assigned it a identification queue in the number of petitions that are before the commission.
Anthony Enriquez:You know the petition process itself can seem agonizingly slow, especially for people who are seeking accountability now and who have been denied it for a long time. It could take several years before the petition is brought to a public hearing. A public hearing would enable Tortuguita's family, loved ones, friends, co-protesters to testify in Tortuguita's favor, and it would allow the United States and Georgia authorities to also appear and to testify about their actions. It's important to ask, in the context of these types of petitions before the Inter-American Commission, inter-american Court or really any international court, I know many people think does human rights law make a difference? What is it going to do? It's not like an American court where you can walk in and you get an order for a judge and people are going to listen to it and they have to follow the judge's order Because at the end of the day the Inter-American Commission, you know are they just going to give a recommendation and then?
Anthony Enriquez:it's just going to be ignored later. I oftentimes, when I hear these types of criticisms of international human rights mechanisms, I think you know just because human rights mechanisms I think you know, just because robbery still exists or murder still exists, you know doesn't mean that we say, oh well, the law is useless, it never, there's no point in it at all. Right, and a lot of what this movement before international human rights mechanisms is is an attempt to really make the law matter. Law, at the end of the day, is an agreement that all of us say. We want to follow these rules, we think these are rules that should govern our community, and so we commit to mutually respecting those rules. That's part of what this is doing.
Anthony Enriquez:Is really sending a message to the state that you can't engage in this type of behavior because the citizens of this country are aware that it's a human rights abuse. And say no to it, though, is really providing a public forum for some type of accountability for this family. When someone's killed, especially by state violence, you really have to ask yourself does justice exist at all for that? There's really no bringing that person back, and even to throw the perpetrator into a jail. Certainly that's a measure of accountability, but not everyone's going to be satisfied with that, with someone else's suffering isn't necessarily going to eliminate my suffering, and so what we're left with is making meaning out of a tragic event that happened and that we can't erase, and so a public hearing is an opportunity for Tortuguita's family to make some meaning out of this really tragic and senseless murder.
Anthony Enriquez:It's an opportunity for them to vindicate their family member's life, to say that it had meaning, that it was important to help spread their message of nonviolence and environmental defense and mutual aid and care, and so that's what we're really trying to do with the petition.
Steve Taylor:Well, Anthony, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to address?
Anthony Enriquez:You know, I think that what's important for people who are motivated and passionate about these issues is to not give in to fear, is to really continue to speak out. Right now in the country, we are seeing a wave of police repression of people who are nonviolently expressing their opinions on what they view to be important political issues. Falls on in a debate on the issue at hand. What's really important for all of us is that we have the ability to peacefully express ourselves without fear of violence from police. I think it's really important to interrogate narratives that say camping in a forest is violent, Occupying a campus lawn is violent.
Anthony Enriquez:Even shattering a window is violent. When we talk about violence, we really have to make sure that there's a difference between the violence that takes someone's life, that causes someone injury, and the violence that makes someone uncomfortable because they don't agree with what we're saying or, you know, might be graffiti on the side of a building, as many windows as you can, but it is to say we really have to be careful about how we use the word violence and question how the word violence is being used against us and really truly ask yourselves who is the source of the violence, who is the source of the assaults, of the killing? I think that's very important for your listeners to ask.
Steve Taylor:Well, Anthony Yerriquez, thank you for joining us on Breaking Green.
Anthony Enriquez:Thank you, we appreciate the opportunity.
Steve Taylor:You have been listening to Breaking Green a Global Justice Ecology Project podcast. To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit globaljusticeecologyorg. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights and expose false solutions. Simply text GIVE to 17-I-V-E to 1716-257-4187. That's 1716-257-4187.