The death of Berta Cáceres last Thursday continues to reverberate throughout Latin America. The award winning Honduran Indigenous and environmental activist was shot and killed and the only witness, Gustavo Castro of the Mexican organization, Otros Mundos, is still being detained in Honduras. Caceres dedicated her life to defending land against mega-projects on Indigenous territory. She had recently been threatened for her stance against a major hydroelectric project, one of the biggest in Latin America.
The news of Caceres death is deeply saddening and Castro’s detention worrying; both events can be added to an all too common list of headlines about environmental defenders in the region. In fact, Latin America is the most dangerous place in the world to be an environmental defender. Those, like Berta and Gustavo, who work for creation care face criminalization, threats and often death for their positions of care for the land and those who live there.
In this roundup, we would like to highlight a few of the articles and analysis around these recent events and also about the risks facing environmental defenders throughout LACA. All items in italics are quotes taken from articles and do not necessarily represent the position of MCC.
Berta Cáceres, Honduran human rights and environment activist, murdered
“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, 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?
Honduras: Deep failures in investigation into activist’s killing put many at risk
The catalogue of failures in the investigation into the death of a prominent Indigenous leader last week exposes the Honduran government’s absolute lack of willingness to protect human rights defenders in the country, said Amnesty International after a visit to the Central American country.“Authorities in Honduras are saying one thing and doing another. They have told us they are committed to finding those responsible for Berta Cáceres’ death yet they have failed to follow the most basic lines of investigation, including the fact that Berta had been receiving serious death threats related to her human rights work for a very long time,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. “This shocking lack of action is sending the dangerous message that anyone can kill those who dare to confront the most powerful in society and get away with it. That authorities seem to be willing to trade lives for money.”
Berta Caceres Received Death Threats from Canadian Company
Murdered Honduran Indigenous activist Berta Caceres warned on multiple occasions that she had received death threats and other harassment from state and corporate agents, including Canadian hydroelectric giant Blue Energy, as a result of her activism resisting unwanted development projects on Indigenous territory. Caceres made statements last April claiming that “men close to Blue Energy,” a transnational Canadian company looking to build a dam in the Rio Blanco area in western Honduras, or people “close to politicians” and “death squads promoted from government policies” were behind the death threats leveled against her. “I have received direct death threats, threats of kidnapping, or disappearance, of lynching, of pummeling the vehicle I use, threats of kidnapping my daughter, persecution, surveillance, sexual harassment, and also campaigns in the national media of powerful sectors,” Caceres told EFE last year.
Before Her Murder, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Criticism
The Clinton-brokered election did indeed install and legitimate a militarized regime based on repression. In the interview, Cáceres says that Clinton’s coup-government, under pressure from Washington, passed terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized political protest. Cáceres called it “counterinsurgency,” carried out on behalf of “international capital”—mostly resource extractors—that has terrorized the population, murdering political activists by the high hundreds. “Every day,” Cáceres said elsewhere, “people are killed.”
Each week at least two people are being killed for taking a stand against environmental destruction. Some are shot by police during protests, others gunned down by hired assassins. As companies go in search of new land to exploit, increasingly people are paying the ultimate price for standing in their way. We found that at least 116 environmental activists were murdered in 2014 – that’s almost double the number of journalists killed in the same period. A shocking 40 % of victims were indigenous, with most people dying amid disputes over hydropower, mining and agri-business. Nearly three-quarters of the deaths we found information on were in Central and South America…As well as documenting fatalities, How Many More? analyses global trends in violence and intimidation, with testimony from activists who have suffered threats, attacks, and criminalisation for standing in the way of so-called ‘development’. In a disturbing trend some are even being tried as terrorists, portrayed as enemies of the state.We also shone a spotlight on Honduras, the most dangerous country per capita to be an environmental activist for the last five years, with 101 deaths between 2010 and 2014.
After a worrying report published by Global Witness last year, Peace Brigades International set up to record this epidemic of violence in the documentary “Land of Corn”. The documentary follows the stories of four environmental activists living and working respectively in Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. The situations are different but the struggle is the same. As well as standing up against extremely powerful interest groups, land defenders work in isolated rural areas, often with poor communications and limited access to traditional protection mechanisms and support networks. “The authorities never support us and sometimes we have to escape to the mountains,” says Guatemalan activists Adrian Kal in the documentary.
Across Latin America, governments criminalize social movements to silence dissent
But the situation in Guatemala for activists — especially for communities that stand in resistance to the expansion of extractive industries such as palm oil, mining and energy production — has become increasingly dire. According to United For the Defense of Human Rights Defenders of Guatemala, or UDEFEGUA, human rights defenders across Guatemala have seen a deteriorating situation. According to data from the organization, by 2010, the number of cases of criminalization against social movements had begun to decline from 182 in 2007 to only 26 in 2009. But by 2013, the number of cases of criminalization steadily rose to nearly 300. “[The criminal charges] all come with the intention of damaging the social fabric and social organization,” wrote the Convergence for Human Rights, an alliance between Guatemala based human rights organizations, of which UDEFEGUA is a member. The threat of charges and prosecution creates fear in the communities that are exercising their rights. Other leaders and movements have faced criminalization and charges for their struggle against the expansion of extractive industries in the country.
Law of the jungle (video)
In 2008, the Peruvian government divided 70 percent of the country into more than 100 blocks and sold the rights to exploit this land – much of it rainforest – to multinationals. The more inroads made by these companies, the more the rivers were polluted with oil. In protest, a group of indigenous people occupied the airfield used by oil giant Pluspetrol. But when a policeman was killed, a group of indigenous men were jailed and accused of murder and terrorism. This is the story of their struggle led by young leader Jose Fachin Ruiz, to clear their names in a courtroom where everything is stacked against them, including a corrupt police force. Their only hope lies with an impassioned defence lawyer and an eyewitness too frightened to testify.
Mapping human rights from Colombia to Congo (mapping tool)
Being able to tie information to a particular time and place means it could also potentially be used in a court of law. It is notoriously difficult to launch successful legal cases against companies and governments that commit human rights or environmental abuses, so this kind of geospatial mapping could offer one more tool to help achieve justice….Rubiano sees Voz as ‘a mechanism for reporting events that affect the environment and human rights, and that allows world-renowned organizations to keep track of human rights violations.’ He says it also permits ‘the general public to know what is happening in Cajamarca, with stigmatization and threats against a peaceful resistance movement.’
Take action-sign the petition calling for Gustavo Castro’s protection and release.