Reports indicate that the US [the Out-Of-Control CIA] overthrew a democratically elected government and destabilized Honduras, creating violence.
This is simply another genuflecting act to International Corporate Bulldozing of the environment and human rights, much as the Dirty Pipelines are in the US.
Berta Caceres gave her life for her cause.
02 November 17 AM
Berta Cáceres rallied the indigenous Lenca people of Honduras and waged a grassroots campaign
that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam.
(photo: Goldman Environmental Foundation)
Findings: Hydro Electric Firm, Honduran Military Planned Berta Caceres Murder
01 November 17
"DESA high-level directors, state agents and criminal elements” formed a criminal network to “assassinate Berta Caceres," said a lawyer with GAIPE.
hydroelectric company that environmental activist Berta Caceres had fought plotted with Honduran military and security forces to kill the Indigenous leader in March 2016, an independent commission has found.
The investigation was carried out by the International Group of Advisors and Expert Persons, which is comprised of several lawyers from Guatemala, Colombia, Holland and the United States and was based on dozens of interviews, court records and partial access to evidence provided by government investigators.
The GAIPE found that high-level executives of Energy Development SA and government officials began planning the assassination of Caceres at least four months before they carried it out.
Roxana Althozt, a lawyer with GAIPE said, "DESA high-level directors, [Honduran] state agents and criminal elements” formed a criminal network to “assassinate Berta Caceres."
Honduran authorities have arrested eight people for the murder, however, the GAIPE investigation points to other suspects.
Caceres was an important and vocal activist within the Civic Council of Popular Organizations and Honduran Indigenous. For over two decades she worked to protect the lands of the Lenca Indigenous of Honduras, and successfully fought DESA’s construction of the hydroelectric dam, Agua Zarca on the White River despite continual death threats and militarization of the area by Honduran forces.
A year before Caceres was gunned down in her home in northeastern Honduras, she was the awarded the Goldman Environmental Award for her continued environmental activism against DESA and the hydroelectric dam, located close to Lenca tribe sacred space.
Caceres' family and COPIHN called for the creation of an independent panel in Nov. 2016 in order to investigate the activist's death. The team read through over 2,000 pages related to the case, including "communications intercepted by Honduran authorities,” according to Reuters.
Althozt said at the press conference that DESA and police officials collaborated to follow and plot Caceres’ death. They also reported other environmental activists in the area were followed.
The Honduran Ministry of Security and Government and DESA did not respond to Reuters request for an interview regarding GAIPE accusations. DESA has repeatedly denied any involvement in the assassination of Caceres.
In an interview Caceres gave to COPIHN when awarded the Goldman prize, she said the Lenca and all Honduran Indigenous are “confronted with a hegemonic project created by national and international ‘big capital’ based in the energy, mining and agro-industrial sectors, adding, "we formally denounced the [Honduran] state’s participation in dozens of hydroelectric projects, but haven’t had any positive response."
DESA Employees Arrested In Honduras For Murder Of Activist Berta Cáceres
May 2nd, 2016 | ||
Two employees of Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) have been arrested and charged with the murder of Berta Cáceres, an activist who was fighting the Agua Zarca dam on the territory of the indigenous Lenca people in Honduras. DESA was awarded a permit to build the 22 megawatt dam in 2011.
The Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque River was initially supported with funding from the World Bank and Sinohydro of China. Construction began in 2012 and access to the river was cut off soon after, heavily impacting the local community who considered the river sacred, in addition to depending on it for food and water. In April 2013, the Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), led by its founder Berta Cáceres, organized a successful road blockade of the dam area that brought construction to a halt. "That project has been imposed with militarization, with very wicked maneuvers on the part of the company," Cáceres told Jacobin magazine. "They have threatened me with death. I have received threats by cell phone. Sexual harassment from the security guards of these companies. I have received threats against my family, against my daughters, against my son. I have been threatened with criminal charges. Accusations. Everything from the illegal possession of arms to coercion, usurpation, and continued damages." She reported 33 death threats against her including from the two DESA employees who were just arrested. The threat to her life was considered grave enough for her to be listed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as needing special protection. In late February of this year, Cáceres held a press conference to denounce those who wanted to kill her. A week later she was murdered on March 3 in her house in La Esperanza. Two months after her death, Honduran police released a public statement on Facebook announcing that Sergio Ramón Rodriguez, a DESA engineer, and Douglas Geovanny Bustillo, the former head of DESA's private security team, were identified as a result of an in-depth investigation dubbed 'Operation Jaguar.' Two other men - Mariano Chavez and Edilson Duarte Meza - were also arrested. Despite the arrests, activists have not been thrilled with the way that Honduras has pursued this investigation. "So far the Honduran-led investigation has been a tragedy of errors – with false accusations, suspected cover-ups, and a brazen conflict of interest at the public prosecutor’s office," Billy Kyte, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said in a press statement. "The people who ordered Berta Cáceres’ murder must be held to account, not just the triggermen." Global Witness, a human rights organization based in London, simultaneously released a set of court documents from 2014 to demonstrate how DESA had intimidated Cáceres and her organization. In the lawsuit, DESA accused Caceres and COPINH of 'usurpation, coercion and continued damage.' "The company was harmed by the protests, which were not peaceful but instead violent," Juan Sanchez Cantillano, a former lawyer for DESA told the Associated Press. "The protesters invaded the terrain of DESA and burned the machinery and the offices. ... They destroyed everything." Local activists also say that the Honduran government also has a lot to answer for. “I want it to be absolutely clear. The government of Juan Orlando Hernández is responsible for the death of Berta Cáceres,” Padre Melo, a local Jesuit priest and radio journalist told the New Yorker magazine. Her daughter agrees. "It is the government who awarded the dam commission and the government who sent military and police to work with Desa’s private security guards, who threatened my mother," Laura Cáceres, tha daughter of Berta Cáceres told the Guardian. "If it wasn’t for our struggle and the international pressure for justice, my mother’s murder would already be extinct." Kyte says that the only way to ensure that the truth could be uncovered would be for the Honduran government to accept the offer by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to conduct an independent investigation. |
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=16075
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