Photo: Marcelino Xol Cucul and Jorge Coc Coc, June 2019.

On July 10, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“PBI accompanies the defenders of the land Marcelino Xol Cucul and Jorge Coc Coc of the Ccda [Community Council of the Highlands] Verapaz

This Tuesday, July 12, they will have their causation [annulment] hearing before the CSJ [Supreme Court of Justice]. His attorney and the attorney will present arguments to prove the lack of due process that led to a 35-year sentence against the two.

Here we share more information about criminalization, the assessments of lawyer Wendy Lopez and messages from Jorge and Marcelino: https://cutt.ly/oLkN2gV.”

Furthermore, in the PBI-Guatemala monthly information package for June, they note: “This month we paid two visits to the criminalized and imprisoned human rights defenders, Jorge Coc Coc and Marcelino Xol Cucul, who are also members of the CCDA.”

In their December 2021 monthly update, PBI-Guatemala also explained: “Jorge Coc Coc and Marcelino Xol Cucul [are] human rights defenders and community leaders from Choctún Basilá, who have been criminalized and imprisoned since 2018.”

Both are Maya Q’eqchi’ defenders with the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA) in the Verapaz region that fights for access to land and against continued evictions and dispossession from ancestral lands.

In January 2022, the German newspaper Junge Welt also reported: “Jorge Coc Coc and Marcelino Xol Cucul, local indigenous authorities from the Choctun Basilá community in Cobán County and members of the CCDA, were sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2019 on fabricated charges of murder and attempted murder.”

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (CCDA) Verapaz since July 2018.