Berta Cáceres, Honduran human rights and environment activist, murdered
Berta Caceres in the Rio Blanco region of western Honduras where she, COPINH (the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) and the people of Rio Blanco have maintained a two year struggle to halt construction on the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric project, that poses grave threats to local environment, river and indigenous Lenca people from the region. She gathered with members of COPINH and Rio Blanco during a meeting remembering community members killed during the two year struggle.
Berta Cáceres was realistic about the risks she faced, but said she felt obliged to fight on and urged others to do so.
Cáceres, who was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her opposition to one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects, was shot at home
Jonathan Watts | Latin America correspondent
the Guardian (UK)
Dateline: Friday 4 March 2016
Berta Cáceres, the Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, has been murdered, barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project.
Her death prompted international outrage at the murderous treatment of campaigners in Honduras, as well as a flood of tributes to a prominent and courageous defender of the natural world.
The co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh) was shot dead by gunmen who entered her home in La Esperanza at around 1am on Thursday. Some reports say there were two killers; others suggest 11. They escaped without being identified, after also wounding the Mexican activist Gustavo Castro Soto.
Police told local media the killings occurred during an attempted robbery, but the family said they had no doubt it was an assassination prompted by Cáceres’s high-profile campaigns against dams, illegal loggers and plantation owners.
“I have no doubt that she has been killed because of her struggle and that soldiers and people from the dam are responsible, I am sure of that. I hold the government responsible,” her 84-year-old mother said on radio Globo at 6.
Karen Spring, a friend of Cáceres’, said it was unclear how many assailants had participated in the attack, but that Cáceres was hit by at least four bullets.
Members of Copinh escorted the body as it left the house on the way to the morgue in the provincial capital. About a hundred of them also marched from the public prosecutor’s office to the police station, where they demanded an independent international investigation. Others headed to La Esperanza to take part in the wake.
“People here are still in shock that Berta is dead,” Spring told the Guardian. “But they are very clear that they will continue their struggle to honour Berta.”
Last year, Cáceres – who is a member of the Lenca indigenous group, the largest in Honduras – was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her opposition to one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects, a cascade of four dams in the Gualcarque river basin, including the Agua Zarca dam.
The campaign has held up the project, which is being built by local firm DESA with the backing of international engineering and finance companies, and prompted the withdrawal of China’s Sinohydro and the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation.
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Cáceres had called for other foreign partners, including the Dutch Development Bank, the Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation and German companies Siemens and Voith, to pull out.
She has also won plaudits from international NGOs for standing up to powerful landowners, a US-funded police force, and a mercenary army of private security guards in the most murderous country in the world for environmental campaigners.
In an interview with the Guardian at the time of her award, Cáceres was realistic about the risks she faced, but said she felt obliged to fight on and urged others to do so.
“We must undertake the struggle in all parts of the world, wherever we may be, because we have no other spare or replacement planet. We have only this one, and we have to take action,” she said.
The dangers appear to have increased in recent weeks. After a Copinh march in Río Blanco on 20 February, she and other participants were confronted by the army, police, local mayor and employees of the dam company. Several were detained and some threatened, the council said in a statement.
Remembering Berta Cáceres: ‘I’m a human rights fighter and I won’t give up’
Read more
It was not the first time. Cáceres previously said she had received warnings that she would be raped or murdered if she continued her campaigns. There have also been past reports that hitmen were hired to assassinate her.
Honduras is a perilous place for activism. Cáceres’s fellow Copinh leader Tomás García was shot dead by a military officer in a protest in 2013. Several others have been killed this year, according to the council. Cáceres had recently moved home because she felt the new house in La Esperanza would be safer.
Between 2010 and 2014, 101 campaigners were killed in Honduras, a higher death toll relative to population than anywhere else, according to the study How Many More? by NGO Global Witness. It said a disproportionately high number of them were from indigenous communities who resisted development projects or the encroachment of farms on their territory.
The United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, who met Cáceres last November, said she was “saddened and horrified” by the news.
“This shows the high level of impunity in Honduras. Beyond the high homicide levels in society, there is a clear tendency for indigenous campaigners and human rights activists to be killed,” said Tauli-Corpuz, whose report on the country will come out in a few months.
She noted the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights had raised concerns about Cáceres’s safety with the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández [installed as president by a coup sanctioned by Washington], last year and formally called on the government to apply “precautionary measures”.
“This meant the government had to protect her,” Tauli-Corpuz said. “Yet she was assassinated just like that. If someone like her suffers in this way, then what chance is there for others who campaign for the environment and human rights?”
Jorge Alcerro, chief of staff for the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, said that security forces would “use all means to find the killers”, but he did not explain why she had no police protection at the time of her murder.
Billy Kyte, a campaigner at Global Witness, paid tribute to Cáceres for her “incredible courage” and said the government – which is behind many of the controversial projects – must reverse the alarmingly murderous trend in Honduras.
“The shocking news of Berta’s killing is a dramatic wake-up call for the Honduran state. Indigenous people are being killed in alarming numbers just for defending their rights. The Honduran state must act immediately to hold the killers to account and protect Berta’s family and colleagues,” he said.
David Gordon, executive director of the Goldman Prize, echoed these comments: “Berta’s bravery in the face of overwhelming repression will be a rallying call for environmental activism in Honduras,” he said in a statement.
Naomi Klein, the Canadian author and environmental campaigner, tweeted: “Devastating news. Berta was a critical leader and fierce land defender. Part of a global wave of such attacks.”
• This article was amended on 7 March 2016. An earlier version said Berta Cáceres’s brother had been wounded in the attack. The wounded man was not her brother but the Mexican activist Gustavo Castro Soto. It was further amended on 11 March 2016 to clarify that Agua Zarca is not “a cascade of four giant dams” but one of four dams planned in the Gualcarque river basin.
Murder of activist Berta Cáceres sparks violent clashes in Honduras
By Jonathan Watts Latin America correspondent / the Guardian (UK)
Students clashed with riot police on Thursday amid anger over failure to protect a high-profile campaigner who had repeatedly received threats on her life
Students clash with riot police Thursday during a protest in Tegucigalpa against the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images
Dateline: Friday 4 March 2016 11.02 EST
Last modified on Sunday 6 March 2016
The murder of environmental and indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres has sparked violent clashes in Honduras despite promises by President Juan Orlando Hernández to swiftly find and punish the killers.
Rock-throwing students clashed with riot police firing tear gas in the University of Honduras on Thursday night amid anger over the authorities’ failure to protect a high-profile campaigner who had repeatedly received threats on her life.
International NGOs called for foreign investors and engineering companies to withdraw from the Agua Zarca hydropower project that Cáceres had been opposing at the time of her death.
The US government also came under fire for supporting a government that came to power in a coup and has since pushed forward with the controversial cascade of dams and failed to prevent Honduras from becoming the most murderous country in the world for environmental campaigners.
Amid growing criticism, President Hernández said local investigators were working with officials from the US and other countries to find the culprits and he promised the full force of the law would come down on the killers.
“Our commitment is to the truth of the facts and to serve justice, no matter who it might involve. No one is above the law. This death will not go unpunished,” he said in a televised speech.
Local media later reported that a suspect is being questioned by police in connection with the murder, which occurred early on Thursday morning when at least two gunmen broke into the home of Cáceres and fired four shots at her sleeping body.
But supporters of Cáceres fear a possible cover-up. Dozens gathered to demand justice outside the morgue where Cáceres’ body is being examined. Some held banners reading “no more impunity”.
A woman holds a banner reading during a protest after the killing of Berta Cáceres, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on Thursday. Photograph: Esteban Biba/EPA
The police initially reported the case as an attempted robbery, but the victim’s family believe the killing was an assassination ordered by people behind the dam project. Cáceres and other members of the group she founded – the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh) – have been in conflict with the operators Desa, the local mayor, police and soldiers. Last week, members of the group were detained and threatened, Copinh said in a statement.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he dangers faced by Cáceres were well known. Last year, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) raised concerns about Cáceres’s safety with the Honduran president Hernández, and formally called on the government to apply “precautionary measures”. There were reiterated in November by the United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous rights, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz.
But the authorities failed to protect the country’s most famous campaigner, who was last year awarded the Goldman Environment Prize. [The Guardian correspondent goes very easy here on the government, a clearly illegitimate regime put into place via a coup engineered in Washington.—Els)
In her acceptance speech, Cáceres appeared to foreshadow her own death, when she noted that “giving our lives in various ways for the protection of rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet”.
Environmental activists are more likely to be killed in Honduras than any other country, according to a study by the NGO Global Witness. More than 80% of murders go unpunished. Part of the problem, according to the InterIACHR, is that the military has taken on roles that should be left to a civilian police. They tend to work in conjunction with powerful interests, while human rights activists are criminalized. [This is nonsense. If the whole state is corrupt and at the service of the plutocrats and international corporations, what would prevent the police from carrying out the murders instead of the army? In most nations around the world, especially poor countries, the distinction is illusory as it is indeed the police—usually a militarized police beefed up through US grants for training and equipment— that carry out these political murders. (Off duty cops are well known to double up as death squads in Latin America, Asia, Africa, etc.—Eds.)
“Honduras should protect defenders when they encounter risks to their life and personal integrity, by adopting an effective and comprehensive prevention strategy, with the goal of preventing attacks, and should take the necessary measures so that they can carry out their work without hindrance or risk,” the commission said last
month.
The utter failure to ensure the security of Cáceres has sparked international condemnation.
“The cowardly killing of Berta is a tragedy that was waiting to happen. For years, she had been the victim of a sustained campaign of harassment and threats to stop her from defending the rights of indigenous communities,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. [An organization that is usually found whitewashing the very same empire that causes horrors like the killing of this activist.—Eds.]
The US government added its voice to the calls for justice. “We strongly condemn this despicable crime. The United States of America calls for a prompt and thorough investigation into this crime and for the full force of the law to be brought to bear against those responsible,” US Ambassador James Nealon said in a condolence message. [Words are cheap, and the world has seen this dozens of times. Just bullshit for the media to report and confuse the clueless Americans.—Eds.)
[Here the Guardian correspondent comes clean and provides a very clear identification of the situation. Good!—Eds.)
But Washington’s role is also controversial because the US backed the current government, which took power after a 2009 coup that ousted the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. The US is now providing funding for the Honduran police force.
International Rivers, an NGO that worked with Cáceres, suggested the US government should shoulder some of the blame for the climate of violence against activists.
Berta Cáceres is one of hundreds of land protesters murdered in last decade.
Hillary Clinton: In a world with a minimum of justice this woman, a world-class crook and criminal, should be in a dungeon awaiting trial for capital offenses instead of one-heartbeat away from the US presidency. [CC BY-SA by International Information Program (IIP)]
We hope that actor Leonardo Di Caprio will not simply fold now and follow the lesser evil script throwing his support to Hillary in November, instead of mounting a campaign to expose this fraud and denounce US foreign policy in general. Unfortunately, the latter is not bloody likely to happen. CC BY-NC-ND by startinghere71
The actor Leonardo Di Caprio – who used his recent Oscar acceptance speech to call for stronger action against climate change – also lamented the death of the activist.
“Incredibly sad news out of Honduras,” he tweeted. “We should all honor the brave contributions of Cáceres.
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