For several months, IRTF has been reading reports on the militarization of the Azacualpa community cemetery in Honduras, where Aura Minerals (headquartered in Toronto and Miami), backed by its Honduras subsidiary MINOSA, has been performing illegal exhumations to facilitate the expansion of the San Andrés gold mine.
GOOD NEWS
The Court of Appeals in Santa Rosa de Copán ordered on February 8, 2022 the suspension of the exhumation and destruction of the Maya-Chortí cemetery in Azacualpa, Copán Department, after local rights organizations like Bufete Estudios Para la Dignidad kept urging the court to take legal actions against the illegal mining operations of Aura Minerals/MINOSA. The company had previously been exhuming and transferring graves secretly at night and taken control of the cemetery with the help of military forces to avoid protests by the local community. With this verdict, the court re-affirmed the illegality with which the mining company has been destroying the Maya-Chortí cemetery in order to expand operations of the San Andrés gold mine.
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IRTF welcomes the actions taken by local rights organizations and the ruling of the Court of Appeals. Now it is a question of enforcement. There are still reports (with documented evidence) of illegal excavation being conducted by the mining company. Nonetheless, this ruling by the Court of Appeals is an important political sign and a step forward to stopping Aura Minerals/MINOSA’s illegal mining operations on the ancestral lands of the Maya-Chortí people in western Honduras .
These are two RRN letters that IRTF published about this case in the last months:
