ALERT: COPINH members attacked and arrested while protesting outside presidential palace

Alert from National Network of Women Defending Human Rights and National Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras:

People arrested and wounded at COPINH protest, violently broken up in front of Presidential Palace

By Dina Meza (translation by Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle)

[Original en español]

Photo: Giorgi Trucci, LINyM

President Juan Orlando Hernández ordered the violent removal of about 150 members of the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) at 5:40am this Monday, May 9th, 2016. Police and military police forces launched tear gas bombs as the protesters arrived peacefully at the Presidential Palace to demand answers regarding the assassination of their General Coordinator, Berta Cáceres.

Although the crime took place more than two months ago, so far the only people detained are four people accused of directly carrying out the crime, but COPINH, Berta's family and the national and international community are demanding action against those who presumably ordered the crime, including personnel of the hydroelectric company Desarrollos Energéticos, S.A, (DESA), politicians and businessmen.

Tomás Gómez, current COPINH coordinator, denounced that he and several of his fellow COPINH members were beaten by the police and that a large quantity of tear gas was launched, affecting boys, girls, seniors and other people who just came to demand justice.

"What we want is for both those who carried out and those who ordered the crime against our sister to be punished. One of the main guilty parties is [Honduran President] Juan Orlando Hernández. There are political and economic interests behind the crime committed against our sister Berta," said Gómez.

He added that there was a concentration of military reserve members in the Presidential Palace and when several COPINH members crossed the security lines and were close to the entrance of the presidential palace they were repressed.

"What we want is for Juan Orlando Hernádez to suspend all contracts that give the green light for indigenous people to be displaced from their lands."

Joining the protest was a sizable group of indigenous people from Santa Elena, La Paz, where the Congressional Vice President, Gladys Aurora López and her husband have at least two hydroelectric projects, including La Aurora and Los Encinos, which have produced deaths, threats and persecution.

Alert from the Network of Women Defending Human Rights
ALERT: Violent attack against women and men of COPINH

The National Network of Women Defending Human Rights in Honduras, put out the following alert about the new repression against COPINH:

Since the early morning more than 150 women and men from COPINH arrived at the Presidential Palace to continue their demands for justice and answers regarding the assassination of Berta Cáceres Flores, who was assassinated this past March 2nd for defending indigenous territory and fighting to expel the DESA company and stop its Agua Zarca project.

They were received with violence by the Honor Guard in front of the Presidential Palace, who launched tear gas bombs. So far reports indicate six people have been detained and numerous wounded.

We demand respect for the physical well-being of the human rights defenders and members of COPINH.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras
May 9th, 2016
National Network of Women Defending Human Rights in Honduras

Alert from Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH)
Alert: Peaceful protest by COPINH attacked in front of presidential palace

Today in the early morning, military from the presidential guard attacked a group of Lenca protesters who are COPINH members, leading to arrests and an ongoing state of threat.

COPINH came to demand justice over the death of its leader Berta Cáceres, assassinated this past March 3rd by members of the military and executives of the DESA company, which has been imposing the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, rejected for years by the Lenca population.

The assassination had enormous repercussions in the media, questioning the current dictatorial government headed by Mr. Juan Orlando Hernández. From the beginning, the management of the investigation was obstructed by the contamination of the crime scene and the theory related to a supposed crime of passion.

In recent days information came out about Berta's assassination being carried out as a premeditated crime by members of the armed forces led by the DESA corporation. Nonetheless, the authorities have yet to produce the people who ordered the crime, among whom probably figure bankers and politicians.

COPINH continues with its irrevocable demand to suspend construction along the Gualcarque River, in addition to demanding justice for its assassinated leader, who dedicated her life to working persistently in defense of the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples and their natural resources.

The collapse of the rule of law in Honduras, consolidated by the 2009 coup d'etat, permitted the approval of countless neoliberal laws intentionally detrimental to indigenous peoples and local communities. The approval of the Water Law in December, 2009, gave the state power to distribute hydrographic basins to families allied with the current dictatorship, a situation that was reinforced by decrees approved in 2010 regarding concessions of hydroelectric basins.

The lack of recognition of the right to prior, free and informed consent is one of the worlds problems affecting indigenous people in Honduras. Berta Cáceres was one of the champions of this cause, and the dam along the Gualcarque river became one of the symbols of this struggle.

We demand the immediate cessation of aggressions in front of the Presidential Palace and respect for the well-being of the protesters, the cancellation once and for all all dam projects in indigenous territories where proper consultation has not taken place, as well as a transparent prosecution against both the perpetrators and the plotters of Berta's homicide.

May 9th, 2016
Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras, OFRANEH

COPINH responds to arrests in case of Berta Cáceres's assassination

COPINH COMMUNIQUÉ  - May 3rd, 2016

[Original en español]


The Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), after a calm assessment of yesterday's events, expresses the following to the national and international community:



1. Yesterday, the Honduran government carried out the so-called "Operation Jaguar," arresting four people that are said to be responsible for participating in the planning and carrying out of our sister and COPINH's General Coordinator, Berta Cáceres.



2. While we confirm that those captured coincide with part of the list of suspects that we maintain as COPINH, we do not trust that this investigation has been as exhaustive or deep as possible, that all appropriate measures have been taken, nor that it includes all of the people responsible for conspiring, planning and executing the assassination.

3. Despite the announcement that three more people are also facing charges, due to the Attorney General's office controlling and silencing communication with COPINH - a victim with the right under Honduran law to participate in the investigative process - this conduct does not leave us with faith that all due diligences and necessary detentions have been done in order to reach the conspirators and high level plotters and perpetrators.



4. This is why, now more than ever, the government should fulfill COPINH and Berta's family's demand for the installation of a commission of experts in this type of crime, led by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which the IACHR has expressed its willingness to participate in under the conditions that have been requested.



5. The government hasn't shown any interest in facilitating and approving an agreement to bring in an commission of experts, which we as COPINH have been demanding since the assassination of our sister and comrade BERTA. This is worrisome because of how fragile the judicial system is, meaning any act of incompetence, inefficiency, collusion and corruption could compromise this process. This is why we want a commission of experts to guarantee the professionalism, objectivity, non-discrimination and proactive participation of COPINH in the investigation. In addition, it generates the unquestionable confidence needed to reach truth, justice, reparation, and the assurance that this will not happen again - never again. This is why we urgently demand that COPINH be given all relevant and available information directly and in a climate of respect for the right to information that we have as victims, since after two months passing since this vile assassination, there has not been even the most minute information communicated directly to us as COPINH's coordinators, nor to the daughters and son of our sister Berta.


6. Finally, beyond what we have pointed out, yesterday's arrests and the Attorney General's statement confirm the participation of the company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. de C.V. (DESA), using capital from powerful economic interests both nationally and internationally (such as the Central American Bank for Economic Integration CABEI, the Dutch bank FMO, the Finnish bank FinFund, as well as the FICOHSA bank and the Atala family), in the assassinatino of our sister Berta Cáceres. This points to the need to extend the investigation into the link between the DESA corporation and its financial associates with other assassinations committed against active members of the opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, including: (1) Tomás García, (2) William Jacobo Rodríguez, (3) his brother Maycol Rodríguez, a child whose right to life was snatched from him at 15 years of age, and (4)Baudilio Sánchez.




There have been five assassinations committed against people opposing DESA and the construction of the Agua Zarca project. The investigation should be extended to include these assassinations, denounced by Berta and COPINH at the time, including other criminal actions such as attempted murders, wounds, abuses and persecution by the company and the state authorities who back them, repression, biased judicial persecution and criminalization against COPINH and the communities adjacent to and affected by the project.



It is for these reasons that we at COPINH demand the immediate and definitive cancellation of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project, which is a project of death that should be expelled from the Rio Blanco Lenca indigenous territory and surrounding inhabited area, since it puts the lives of our sisters and brothers who have opposed it (and continue to oppose it) and resisted its construction with everything they have.



BERTA LIVES!!!



Intibucá, May 3rd, 2016




With the ancestral strength of Berta, Iselaca, Etempica and Mota we raise our voices, full of Life, Justice, Dignity and Freedom.

Human Rights Observation Mission in Honduras

A member of La Voz de los de Abajo and coordinator of the Honduras Solidarity Network in North America, Vicki Cervantes, is traveling in Honduras and participating in an observation mission organized by COFADEH. 

The international mission is made up of 18 human rights observers and journalists from Colombia, El Salvador, Chile, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Spain, France, Italy and the United States. The focus of the mission is on the Aguan Valley but we spent the first day, May 7th,  in La Esperanza, Intibuca with the family of Berta Caceres. This was at the same time that the court hearings were beginning in Tegucigalpa for the first arrests in Berta's case. Four men, including one retired and one active military officer and one Desa employee were brought to court. (Two additional men have been arrested: one is said to have been one of the hired guns,  but little information has come out about  the sixth man arrested on May 8). Berta's daughter Bertita was traveling Laura and Olivia were attending court in Tegucigalpa so the delegation met with the rest of her immediate family including Berta's mother Astraberta and her siblings.

Doña Astraberta with a grandson
Carlos H. Reres, Bertha Olvia
,and a delegation member

Sometimes in tears all the family spoke and shared their experience of Berta's passion and dedication and the events the days and hours before her murder. They explained that the government has not kept the family informed,of the investigation and that they learned that there had been arrested through the media. They strongly emphasized that they continue to demand that an independent investigation team from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission be involved as they have no faith in the government's investigation, its forensic process nor in its ability or will to prosecute the intellectual authors of the crime and all of those who ordered, organized, finances, informed and carried out the assassination. Just as one example of why they don't have confidence in the integrity of the process is that the head of the government department prosecuting the accused killers has a private practice as well and the defense lawyers for the same accused killers come from that private practice law firm.  Berta's sister Agustina said, "I am not tired of crying for my sister but I am tired of so much injustice".
Bertha Oliva of COFADEH spoke briefly about the situation in the country and the campaigns against human rights defenders of all kinds. We were also joined by Carlos H. Reyes, leader of the beverage workers' union and important figure in the resistance movement, who with Berta Caceres had been preparing to run for President and Vice President as independent peoples' candidates in 2009. Carlos spoke on the context in which repression and violence is taking place in Honduras and the Hernandez' governments ruthless economic and political agenda to privatize and exploit Honduras' resources with no regard for the consequences for the people as well as the role of the United States in setting the agenda and doing everything possible to continue the coup.

After the meeting the delegation was invited to Doña Astraberta's house where the family has set up photos and an altar dedicated to Berta. We ended the day by going to the cemetery to pay our respects.

Felix (gray shirt) with members of the delegation

Later in the evening we were happily surprised when the jornalist and community radio station organizer Felix Molina showed up in La Esperanza.  Felix survived two attempts on his life on May 2nd. The second attempt left him with gunshot wounds to both legs. He got out of the hospital on May 7th and along with film-maker Jesse Freeston came to La Esperanza to see Bertha's family and to greet the delegation. Felix hosted a radio show on Radio Globo called Resistencia for several years after the 2009 coup; he continues to broadcast his own show and also coordinates an effort to organize community radio stations all over Honduras and get them legal permits to funciton. He has often been threatened and is one more journalist in Honduras to suffer violence.

This violence is also ferocious against anyone opposing the government's programs. As we were meeting in La Esperanza, high school students in San Pedro Sula were in the streets, blocking the toll road in protest of new regulations in the school system. The students were attacked by police and 100 high schoolers were arrested. They were later released. Meanwhile the government suspended the teaching license of Jaime Rodriguez,  president of the secondary teachers union COPEMH,  accusing him of being responsible for the students' protests across the country. There have been a number of cases of students disappearing or being attacked after protests which continue to grow, especially in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.
V. Cervantes, May 8, 2016, Honduras

Four Men With Ties to DESA and Honduran Military Captured and Accused of Berta's Assassination - Her Family and COPINH Respond

Statement by Berta Caceres's Family and COPINH
May 2nd, 2016

[Declaración original en español]

Olivia, Berta, Laura and Salvador Zúniga Cáceres (Berta Cáceres’s daughters and son), Austra Bertha Flores (her mother), and the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), each a victim of the assassination of Berta Cáceres under Honduran law, were surprised this morning by the Attorney General and ATIC (Criminal Investigation Agency) announcement in relation to the capture of persons involved in this vile crime against our beloved Berta.

The family and COPINH, as well as all Honduran society and the international community demand justice and truth regarding the assassination of our Berta.

Because we have been denied our right under Honduran law to participate in the investigative process from the beginning, we have no way of knowing if these arrests are the product of an exhaustive and diligent investigation, nor do we know if they include those who ordered the assassination. The news of the alleged participation of active and retired members of the military linked to DESA in the assassination should be investigated further and indicates involvement by state agents which is enough reason for the immediate suspension of and a definitive end to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project.

We regret that the investigations conducted by the Attorney General have moved forward without our participation and that our voices have not been heard.

Today, two months since the assassination of our dear Berta, we continue being victimized, having to learn of any news through the media rather than the official channels afforded to us by law.

Our ongoing lack of confidence in the Attorney General’s office has been fomented by its own actions, which lack transparency and ignore the victims. If the State has truly conducted an exhaustive, diligent investigation based on scientific proof that looks into both the plotters and perpetrators of this crime, then today they should accept the participation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights so that a group of independent experts can analyze the actions carried out thus far and establish whether they are consistent with the highest international standards of due diligence.

If the Attorney General's office and its agency have carried out their work correctly, there should be no fear of having the commission that the IACHR has already made available begin its investigation immediately.

What we seek is truth and justice in the case of our beloved Berta's assassination. If we achieve that, everybody wins.

###

Signs that Berta is alive: Flower of Azalea, by Melissa Cardoza

Flower of Azalea

April 29^th, 2016

[Original en español - Flor de Azalea por Melissa Cardoza]

She couldn’t have been six years old, or around that, barefoot. Leaning on a support beam, or hiding behind her mom’s body, Azalea would spy on me with her bright eyes full of mischief and shyness. Sometimes she would come up to my chair and with her little finger she would trace along the plastic armrest, up anPuchica! if that isn’t the prettiest name I have heard. And Azalea laughed through the few teeth she had at that age. Did you know that there’s a song named after you? She shook her head. Should I sing it to you? She nodded. Like the froth swept along by the mighty river, flower of Azalea, life surprises you with a hug. I changed the words to the bolero so as not to fill her little head with too much drama.

d down, the other finger in her mouth, her eyes looking at me. What did you say your name was? Azalea. ¡

From time to time I would run into her again, always in COPINH’s community center, Utopía, with her mom who would complain to me about school. Other times I would watch her playing around with her friends. Groups and groups of people would come through, for an assembly, for a ceremony, for a meeting or a party. Berta would be there, organizing, drinking coffee, fooling around, rallying people. Azalea would watch her with her eyes open wide because she drove a car like the men and spoke strongly.

Azalea had grown up. I ran into her at a mobilization of the Lenca women of COPINH during the occupation of the Attorney General’s building, an energetic action that grew from the fury of Berta’s sisters. Definitely the most powerful action so far. The women with their voices, their forms of protest, their strength and determination. Azalea was there holding up the traditional Lenca vara alta, she is an adolUtopía still resides in her face. What are you doing here, little girl, I ask her playfully. Well, here in the struggle.

escent, but that little girl from

Here in the struggle, it echoed inside of me. Later I heard her speak to the press, speaking about la compañera Berta, about COPINH, about her Lenca people, and then later in the People’s Summit. I listened intently to the crisp way she spoke, as resolute as a spring of water or a blooming tree. Her grounded words, precise, were spoken without raising her voice or gesturing wildly, without pretense or imitation.  

Azalea, the small flower of the mighty Gualcarque River. They threw stones at her that day when the delegation was attacked by people close to the company, that day when the crowd was divided, some indignant at not being well-enough protected, everything out of control, some coming to understand the difficulties lived through by people resisting industry’s advance, all feeling in their bodies the fear, experiencing the hate, the viciousness that followed Berta to her death.

On one of those long trips I took with Berta, miles on end traversing the land, those trips where we would laugh and debate, or be quiet for hours, we were coming back from a comrade’s funeral and I, caught up in my middle class anguish, told her that at this rate we would end up losing all of this country’s best fighters. And she, speaking more as expert than prophet, told me, Well yeah, they kill the becompa. I insisted, Berta, so then who is going to change this country? It’s not like there’s a lot of people with that level of determination, other wise we wouldn’t be where we are. And she looked at me with those dagger eyes that she would sometimes bring out, raising her voice: What the fuck is wrong with you, with your curly-haired self, the people are who will make change, the ones who always struggle, the sons and daughters of the people, we never run out of fighters, some come first and others later, but have some confidence, compa, otherwise what are we doing? What do we do all we do for, huh? 

st first, to fuck with the rest of us; but that’s how this goes,

Here in the struggle, Azalea said, just barely a young woman, with that mischievous Lenca smile, the same one Berta would have on as she says, See? What did I tell you?

Melissa Cardoza

April 2016