Rights Action
January 30, 2020
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Sign-on letter for organizations, solidarity collectives
Justice for 2016 assassination of Berta Caceres, widely loved and respected territory, human rights, environmental defender, and anti-patriarchy, anti-imperialist activist
Justice for assassination of Berta Caceres: Impunity doesn't end with a sentence
In light of the conviction and sentencing of seven of the “material author” hitmen paid to carry out the March 3, 2016 assassination of Berta Cáceres, human rights organizations demand that progress be made into the investigation, trial and punishment of the “intellectual authors” of her assassination, members of Honduras’ corrupted economic and political elites who decided she need to be eliminated, and then planned and paid for her killing.
On December 2nd, 2019, the First Chamber of the Sentencing Court with national jurisdiction in Criminal Matters, based in the city of Tegucigalpa, issued sentences against seven perpetrators for the assassination of Berta Cáceres, an indigenous leader and co-founder of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and the attempted assassination of Gustavo Castro, which occurred on March 2nd, 2016.
Among those sentenced are workers of the company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) and members of the Honduran Armed Forces.
The Court, which handed down the sentences more than a year after the trial finished, confirmed that the resistance and organizing efforts of the Lenca people under the auspicies of COPINH and led by Berta Cáceres in defense of the Gualcarque River "(...) caused the planning of the assassination and hiring of assassins to kill Mrs. Cáceres, all with the knowledge and consent of the executives of DESA, including Mr. Sergio Rodríguez and others who are not part of this process.”
This reaffirms that the assassination of Berta Cáceres was a planned and organized action with the knowledge and consent of the executives of the company DESA, with the goal of neutralizing the voice and leadership of Berta, and of the resistance of the Lenca people.
National and international human rights organizations, including COPINH, have observed in detail the search for justice for this crime and the violations surrounding this cause. We recognize that convictions have been handed down against the material authors, but we remain concerned about the lack of action against all the intellectual authors.
In this regard, we demand that the State of Honduras advance the prosecution of David Castillo, whose preliminary hearing has been suspended on three occasions by his legal defense.
Likewise, we demand that progress be made as soon as possible in the investigative inquiry and judicial proceedings against the other intellectual authors linked to the crime, who currently remain unpunished.
The State of Honduras must act diligently against intellectual authors as it has promoted its action against material authors.
We also urge the State of Honduras to revoke DESA’s (ill-gotten) concession along the Gualcarque River, sacred to the Lenca people. Bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) have identified as the concession as the main source of risk to the life and integrity of the Lenca people and the COPINH communities.
