March 2, 2018 More than 60 international organizations, backed by members of European Parliament, demand justice in the case of Berta Cáceres, echoing the requests of COPINH (Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) for guarantees of non-repetion and defense of human rights in the reigion.
"The 2005 massacre was not the end, it was just the beginning"
Rosalinda Dionicio is a leader of the United Peoples’ Network of the Ocotlán Valley in Defense of Territory. Since 2009, the organization has been demanding the closure of the San José mine, owned by a subsidiary of the Canadian company Fortuna Silver Mines, which they say has caused environmental destruction and water shortages in their communities. Rosalinda is a survivor of a 2012 attack by gunmen in which her colleague Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez was assassinated--one of many serious human rights violations suffered by the organization.
January 25, 2018 An indigenous community from the region of La Montaña (state of Guerrero) have been waging a legal battle since 2011 to prevent their lands from being conceded to mining companies. The indigenous Me’phaa community lives in San Miguel del Progreso, or Júba Wajiín in their indigenous language. In the last seven years, they have obtained two legal protection mechanisms that have rendered a mining project practically null and void.
Martín Gómez is a small, slim man. He walks with confidence and you can see that he has planted corn and grain all his life. He lives in the middle of green mountains in Santa Elena, southern Honduras. Martín is part of the MILPAH indigenous movement, created in 2010 to defend land and the Lenca indigenous community, a predominant indigenous people in Honduras. A year after the organization was founded, the Honduran government approved a concession for the construction of the Los Encinos S.A. hydroelectric dam in Santa Elena on the Chinacla river.