Solidarity with Water and Land Defenders in Honduras!
The Honduras Solidarity Network in North America strongly condemns the wave of murders of land and water defenders in the Bajo Aguan region of Colon, Honduras in recent weeks.
On January 7th, Ally Dominguez and Jairo Bonilla, both water defenders from the anti-mining struggle in Guapinol, Colon, were assassinated on their way home from work. Ally Dominguez was one of the Guapinol defenders arrested and detained for some timelast year for his participation in protests against the mining company, Inversiones Los Pinares.
Organized campesino land defenders have been targeted too. OnJanuary 9th, two members of campesino cooperative La Chile, were seriously wounded when private security guards working for the Honduran agro-industry company, Dinant, and Honduran police opened fire on the community.
On January 18th, Jose Omar Cruz Tomé, President of the Los Laureles Cooperative was gunned down in his home along with a member of his family. Cruz Tomé had reported he was receiving threats before his murder.The Dinant Corporation opposes the cooperative settlement and its armed security guards routinely threaten campesinos.
Since assuming the presidency one year ago, the government of President Xiomara Castro has confronted the difficult task of dismantling the narco dictatorship’s apparatus. In the Aguan region supporters and beneficiaries of the narco-dictatorship, including powerful landowners, mining companies, and elements of the security forces continue to intimidate the communities and grassroot organizations. Now it appears that private paramilitary security guards, elements of the police and other National Security entities, have resumed playing an active role in the violence just as they did during the 12 years of the dictatorship from 2009-2021.
While the Aguan region is the center of violence against rural communities, there have been worrisome attacks against campesino leaders in other regions such as the January 25th shooting of Abelino Sánchez,of the Network of Defenders of Land and Territory (RENADET) and National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC), President of the Aguacatal Peasant Cooperative in Villanueva, Cortes. Sánchez remains hospitalized as of this writing.
Recently there have been warnings from U.S. officials to the Castro government against interference with foreign corporate investment in Honduras.As a solidarity network working in the US and Canada we call on both governments not to interfere in the Honduran government’s reforms aimed at eliminating the remnants and structures of the narco-dictatorship. Instead they should support a serious defense of Human Rights in Honduras and not support corporations implicated in human rights violations.
Given the situation and alarming escalation of violence, the Honduras Solidarity Network joins international and Honduran organizations in support of the demands of the affected communities and organizations which are:
- A serious investigation, independent from the local judiciary and police, of all the murders and violence that starts with the recognition of the victims’ status as human rights and environmental defenders as key to the investigation.
- That the defenders be provided with all necessary protective measures they request as required by Honduran law.
- That the Honduran government take the necessary steps to complete the cancellation of the permits for the Inversiones Pinares mining project in the Carlos Escalera National Park on the Guapinol River.
- That the Honduran government fully implements the February 22, 2022 agreement between the Honduran government and agrarian reform cooperatives, the Agrarian Platform and Coordinator of Popular Organization in the Aguan-COPA.
- That the Honduran penal code be reformed to bring penalties for land usurpation into agreement with international human rights standards and that the proposals from the campesino movement for a new agrarian reform be prioritized.
