Activists Demand Justice Following Assassination of Berta Cáceres
More than 50 humanitarian and environmental groups from around the world called on Friday for an independent international investigation into the assassination of Honduran Indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres, who was murdered in her sleep at 1am on Thursday by two unknown assailants.
“Mrs. Cáceres’ case is the most high-profile killing within a growing trend in the murder, violence, and intimidation of people defending their indigenous land rights in Honduras,” wrote the groups in their letter to the Honduran president.
“We know that in Honduras it is very easy to pay people to commit murders,” Zuñiga Caceres said of her mother’s death to teleSUR. “But we know that those behind this are other powerful people with money and a whole apparatus that allows them to commit these crimes.”
Cáceres was a prominent leader in the Indigenous movement in Honduras against one of Central America’s largest hydropower projects, four enormous dams known as “Agua Zarca” in the Gualcarque river basin, the Guardian reported. The Indigenous group Cáceres founded, Civil Council for Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), has so far been successful in preventing the project from moving forward.
Cáceres was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism just last year.
“Berta Cáceres devoted her life to protecting natural resources, public spaces, land rights, rivers from the privatization process that’s underway and that gained speed after the 2009 military coup,” said Karen Spring, the Honduras-based coordinator of the social justice network Honduras Solidarity Group, in an interview with Free Speech Radio News on Thursday. “She spent her life defending land and and basically supporting communities, mostly indigenous communities all over the country.”
As a result of her activism, Cáceres had received death threats and feared for her life, the Los Angeles Times reported, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a prominent human rights organization, had last year formally called on the Honduran government to put protections in place for Cáceres, according to the Guardian. The UN has condemned the Honduras government for failing to protect her, and activists have accused the government of having a hand in her death.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT