Environmental Human Rights: News & Updates

The 26 tribes of the native Tolupán peoples who live on ancestral lands throughout Yoro Department are organized in the Federation of Xicaques of Yoro Tribes (FETRIXY). The Tolupán communities are constantly organizing to defend their ancestral lands from the economic interests of outsiders: large private landholders, hydroelectric dam companies, mining companies, and the timber industry. After the election of new tribal leaders on March 26, there has been increased pressure from logging companies to threaten and discredit the Tolupán tribes. The newly leadership has asked the National Institute for Conservation and Forest Development (ICF) to not receive or process any requests for forest management plans in the territory that corresponds to the tribe of San Francisco de Locomapa. This has angered logging industry executives.

At particular risk is Tolupán tribal leader José María Pineda and his family in San Francisco de Locomapa, Yoro. Criminal groups at the service of the timber industry have publicly stated that they would look for José María Pineda and his daughters to attack them and burn down their house.

Since January of this year, we have written letters to authorities in Honduras in response to eight assassinations of land and water defenders in the Aguán Valley. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona became the first defender killed in the Aguán Valley this year outside the departments of Colón or Atlántida.  He was murdered on Tuesday, April 18, after participating in a commemoration of the International Day of Peasant Struggle. The 64-year-old community leader had been active in his community’s fight for their land and water for more than 30 years in Olanchito, Yoro Department. José Gilberto Martínez Cardona was a member of the National Association of Honduran Peasant Farmers (ANACH), as well as the secretary of the campesino cooperative “Blessing of God #2.”

Energy generation is highly controversial in Colombia, whether it be from coal, gas, or hydroelectric. The controversy stems from the environmental, economic, and social impacts on local communities surrounding the energy plants. On the Magdalena River in Huila Department (southwest Colombia), artisanal fishers (i.e., small-scale) have been organizing against the El Quimbo hydroelectric project for the past 15 years. In 2008, the government have the energy company the green light to flood over 8,500 acres of land for the construction of the dam and power plant. The flooding displaced farming communities and harmed the local fishing industry.

ASOQUIMBO is the Association of People Affected by the El Quimbo Hydroelectric. Its spokesperson, Alirio Perdomo, is also president of the Association of Calandrero Fishermen of the Magdalena River.  Because of their efforts to have the government recognize the environmental and social impacts of the hydroelectric project, many ASOQUIMBO members have endured serious death threats and harassment, as well as the destruction of small crops on which the communities heavily depend. On March 28 at 5pm, Alirio Perdomo published a video publicly denouncing the levels of fish mortality in the Betania dam and the negative impacts on artisanal fishers due to "controlled discharges" from El Quimbo. Two hours later, while on his way into the city of Hobo, two men on a motorcycle shot at him, hitting his ear in an attempt to murder him.

María Concepción Hernández and her husband Santos Ortiz, members of the Association for the Development of the Peninsula of Zacate Grande (ADEPZA), have been criminalized on multiple occasions for protecting their land and the privatization of public beaches on the peninsula of Zacate Grande in the community of Playa Blanca. On March 27, Santos H. Ortiz was arrested by Honduran police for unknown reasons. When María Concepción Hernández went to visit him in jail on April 1, she was arrested allegedly because of a pending arrest warrant dating back to August 29, 2019. The police refused to provide any information about their detention to their lawyers and colleagues from ADEPZA, only telling them that she had been transferred to Amapala on El Tigre Island, Valle Department.

Defenders of the ADEPZA organized communities, such as Santos Ortiz and María Concepción Hernández,  have been a benchmark of resistance against the territorial dispossession by large landowners who seek to monopolize all the lands at their disposal using violence, criminalization and corruption. We denounce the systematic judicial persecution against the defenders of the Zacate Grande peninsula, who also in recent weeks have faced a number of incidents in their communities.

Water defenders in the community of Guapinol in Tocoa, Colón Department, have been surveilled, harassed, threatened, and criminalized for the past five years. Some have even been killed. Eight were held in pre-trial detention for more than two years until the Supreme Court dismissed the case and ordered their release in February 2022. Two were assassinated in January of this year (cf our letter 24 JAN 2023).

Now the Public Ministry in Tocoa is trying to re-criminalize five of the water defenders.  Five members of the Municipal Committee in Defense of the Common and Public Goods of Tocoa (Comité Municipal en Defensa de los Bienes Comunes y Públicos, or CMDBCP) are being prosecuted again, even though the criminal proceedings against them were annulled by a court in June 2022. Defenders Juan López, Leonel George, Reynaldo Domínguez, Marco Tulio Ramos, and Adaly Cedillo are once again facing criminal charges.

Leonel George, one of the water defenders, called this criminalization “[evidence that the Tocoa Public Ministry] is protecting itself and that they are doing the job for the interests of the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares/Ecotek.” The government (during the years of the coup dictatorship) carved out a piece of the Carlos Escaleras National Park to allow Los Pinares to construct an iron oxide mine to supply US steelmakers. Contamination from the mine threatens the drinking water, fishing, and agricultural crops of 90,000 residents of the Bajo Aguán Valley.