Status report on sugar cane agrochemicals ... - Sucre Ethique

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Example of a civil society campaign :
Nicaragua Case
Example of a civil society campaign linked with agrochimicals and
sugarcane
The sugarcane workers are in Managua
ANAIRC mobilizes to demand damages from the Pellas Group
A total of 2,202 people have died between March 14, 2005 and March 5,
2009. Forty-six people die every month as a result of CRF alone.
March 11, 2009 – Managua - Giorgio Trucchi – RE- UITA
They set out from Chichigalpa, in western Nicaragua, at 4 a.m. on March
9, so they would arrive early at Managua. They set up camp near the Cathedral,
with their hammocks, their things and the food they had brought
with them. The campsite is located in the center of the city, some 500 meters
from the Pellas Building, where the powerful economic group concentrates
all of its activities in the Nicaraguan capital. The campers are the former
sugarcane workers grouped in the Nicaraguan Association of People
A� ected by Chronic Renal Failure (ANAIRC), an IUF a� liate.
They decided to march to the capital to demand that they be compensated
for the serious illness they developed while working at Ingenio San
Antonio. The members of ANAIRC have been denouncing the responsibility
of the Pellas Group -which includes the company Nicaragua Sugar Estates
Ltd., owner of Ingenio San Antonio- for years now, blaming it for the indiscriminate use of
agrotoxic chemicals in the sugarcane plantations and the ensuing pollution such chemicals have
caused in the area’s aquifers.
According to ANAIRC statistics, 3,209 people have died in the last few years in the departments of
León and Chinandega, and there are over 4,000 more that have been a� ected. It is a real epidemic
that has left thousands of widows and orphans. Which explains why many of the 200 people that
have marched to the capital are widows, who are asking the company to respond for the death of
their husbands.
In a press release sent to the media last week, the former workers a� ected by CRF declared that
Law No. 456 (the Act for the Addition of Occupational Risks and Illnesses) classi� es CRF as a professional
illness and includes it in the Code of Labor.
The number of people who have died is calculated based on the deaths <strong>report</strong>ed in the Municipality
of Chichigalpa, and the cases that are <strong>report</strong>ed to ANAIRC by people from other municipalities.
A total of 2,202 people have died between March 14, 2005 and March 5, 2009.
<strong>Status</strong> <strong>report</strong> on sugar cane
agrochemicals management
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ETHICAL-SUGAR