Berta C\u00e1ceres and local assembly community members campaigning against the Agua Zarca dam. Photo: courtesy of the Goldman Prize.<\/i><\/p>\n
Berta C\u00e1ceres was
\nkilled while sleeping in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras on 3rd
\nMarch 2016. Over the past few years, she had been harassed, and received
\nmultiple death threats for her role in the movements she led opposing the Agua
\nZarca dam project. The project threatened
\nto cut off the water supply to the Indigenous Lenca community in Honduras,
\ndepriving them of the right to sustainably manage and live off their
\nterritories and sacred river. <\/p>\n
C\u00e1ceres won the 2015
\nGoldman Environmental Prize for her work. But even before her death
\nshe had already paid a heavy price for her activism, because of which, her
\ndaughters and son had been forced to leave the country as their lives were
\nunder threat. Less than two weeks after Berta\u2019s murder, 150 families members of
\nthe Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH),
\nfounded by Berta, were evicted from the community of Rio Lindo, Cort\u00e9s, by the
\nMilitary Police and the Special Force \u2018Cobras\u2019.\u00a0
\nAnd Nelson Garc\u00eda, also a member of COPINH, who
\nhad assisted families evicted earlier in the day, was murdered. <\/p>\n
Global outrage<\/strong><\/p>\n Caceres\u2019 assassination, On the very same The Caceres family Who\u2019s involved<\/strong><\/p>\n A deeper look at At the national The Atala family Most of these dam But the Agua Zarca Projects continued regardless of community resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n Chinese state-owned Too little too late<\/strong><\/p>\n Hours after Berta However, the day It was only after FinnFund decided to The suspension of US complicity, unrestrained corporate power, and government impunity Attempts to wash There is absolute Berta\u2019s murder is \u201cWe must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, The corporate Berta C\u00e1ceres and local assembly community members campaigning against the Agua Zarca dam. Photo: courtesy of the Goldman Prize. Berta C\u00e1ceres was killed while sleeping in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras on 3rd March 2016. Over the past few years, she had been harassed, and received multiple death threats for her role in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe obvious climate of widespread human rights violations, and overwhelming
\nimpunity in Honduras, have provoked outrage in the country and across the
\nglobe. This has manifested in massive
\ndemonstrations in Tegucigalpa, New York and elsewhere, in strong effort to put pressure
\non the government and corporations involved in the ring of complicity to
\nBerta\u2019s murder, to respond and put an end to the escalating violence.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\nday as Berta\u2019s murder, Hidroel\u00e9ctrica Agua Zarca, a project of the Honduran
\nprivate energy company Desarrollos Energ\u00e9ticos, SA (DESA), issued a statement
\nimmediately denying any involvement in the murder: \u201cHidroel\u00e9ctrica
\nAgua Zarca roundly affirms that there is no direct nor indirect connection
\nbetween the project and the regrettable event that ended the life of the
\nindigenous leader.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nand members of COPINH however, dispute this position, pointing to DESA in a communiqu\u00e9 as the main source of multiple
\nthreats, persecution and aggression against the Lenca community and COPINH
\nmembers. <\/p>\n
\nwho is behind the Agua Zarca dam project points to both national and global
\ncomplicities by financial institutions and corporations. <\/p>\n
\nlevel, DESA is the local private energy company in charge of implementing the
\nproject. The company is partially controlled by the wealthy Honduran Atala
\nfamily, whose billionaire member Camilo Atala recently turned his Grupo
\nFinanciero Ficohsa into the biggest financial conglomerate in Central America
\nby acquiring most of Citibank\u2019s assets in the region.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\nhas done little to hide their support for the 2009 Honduras military coup that
\nousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. With the backing of
\nHonduras\u2019s business elites, the Lobo administration that followed the military
\ncoup embraced the neoliberal development model with the slogan "Honduras is Open for Business" granting 41
\nhydroelectric dam illegal concessions in 2010 alone, including the Agua Zarca
\nproject. <\/p>\n
\nprojects were granted on indigenous territory without prior and informed
\nconsent of the affected communities, and in blatant violation of International Labor Organization Convention 169,
\nwhich requires that "consultation with indigenous peoples should be
\nundertaken through appropriate procedures, in good faith, and through the
\nrepresentative institutions of these peoples". <\/p>\n
\nproject also has crucial international funding support from at least the Central American Bank for Economic Integration;
\nthe Dutch development
\nbank FMO; Finnfund from Finland and German company Voith
\nHydro. The World Bank via the International
\nFinance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm, has denied their involvement in the project. <\/p>\n
\nSinohydro Group,
\none of the largest hydropower engineering companies in the world, was the
\noriginal contractor hired to build the dam.\u00a0
\nBut in late 2013, Sinohydro decided to withdraw from the Agua Zarca
\nProject, publicly citing ongoing community resistance and outrage following the
\ndeath of COPINH environmental activist Tomas Garc\u00eda who was shot and killed by
\nthe army near the project site. Responding to a query by the Business &
\nHuman Rights Resource Centre Sinohydro Group said: \u201cRight from the very
\nbeginning of our mobilization, it was noticed that there were serious interest
\nconflicts between the Employer of the Project, i.e. DESA, and the local
\ncommunities, which were treated as unpredictable and uncontrollable to the
\nContractor. Therefore, Sinohydro Corporation Limited instructed to suspend all
\nthe site performance and ongoing preparations, and demobilized all his manpower
\nfrom the project site on July 15th 2013.\u201d<\/em> The surprising
\nwithdrawal of the Chinese company in 2013 citing conflict with local
\ncommunities however, did not elicit any doubts from the ostensibly human rights bastions<\/em>, Dutch and Finnish backers of the
\nproject, who continued business as usual until Berta\u2019s murder was too much of a
\nscandal to conceal. <\/p>\n
\nwas murdered FMO and the Finnish corporation, released a statement regretting the murder and calling \u201cfor
\na thorough investigation on the events and to hold those responsible to
\naccount\u201d while they state to be \u201ccurrently working with our contacts in
\nHonduras to review exactly what has happened.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nafter publishing the statement, FMO published a document on FAQ on the project clearly responding to the
\nobvious negative attention following Berta\u2019s killing. The document focuses only
\non the benefits of the project promising to \u201cprioritize local recruitment and
\nprovide school materials to all students of the 11 communities\u201d. In addition
\nthey say,\u201cFMO is also aware that in
\nmany cases, our clients do not possess the knowledge and\/or experience in
\nimplementing projects to the international standards of best environmental and
\nsocial practice that FMO requires\u2026\u201d<\/em>And so with a
\nstated civilizing mission oriented towards \u201cdeveloping countries with weak
\ngovernance\u201d as the FAQs refer to Honduras, any doubts of complicity in
\nviolation of human rights are cleared. Green-washing corporate neo-colonialism
\nat its finest. <\/p>\n
\nthe murder of Nelson Garc\u00eda, another COPINH member, on Tuesday 14th March that FMO
\nannounced in a statement its decision "to suspend all activities
\nin Honduras, effective immediately. This means that we will not engage in new
\nprojects or commitments and that no disbursements will be made, including the
\nAgua Zarca project\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nfollow suit, to suspend disbursements to the project, though the CEO of the
\nfund, Jaakko Kangasniemi, explained to Development Today<\/em>
\n\u201cwe still believe that the people in the affected areas want this project. But
\nat this juncture we have to take a look at the situation<\/em>\u201d. <\/p>\n
\nactivities is a welcome decision; but is too little, too late. Suspending
\nactivities in Honduras is not nearly the same as pulling out permanently,
\nsomething that COPINH members have been demanding for a long time. <\/p>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nthe guilt away also holds true for the US State Department, who admittedly supported the coup in Honduras in 2009.\u00a0 In a short statement released March 4, it offers \u201cthe full
\nsupport of the United States to help bring the perpetrators to justice\u201d.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\nsilence, as one can expect, about the permanence of US military aid and troops
\nin Honduras that have only fuelled repression of social movements and violence,
\nputting the country on the podium as \u201cthe deadliest place for environmental
\nactivists\u201d according to Global Witness. <\/p>\n
\nnot an isolated case fuelled by the specific context in Honduras but one of the
\nmost extreme examples of deadly complicity between unrestrained corporate
\npower, government impunity and elites across the world. Examples abound: from
\nthe Niger Delta where women continue to challenge oil exploration by international oil
\ncompanies; in Mexico where indigenous women are fighting to keep their
\ncommunities\u2019 land from large scale wind energy production projects; in Brazil
\nwhere the collapse of a mining dam in 2015 resulted in deaths
\nof the local community and continues to pose a risk to the survivors; in South
\nAfrica where pharmaceutical companies continue to block the access of affordable generic
\nantiretrovirals to the poor and vulnerable communities infected with HIV; and
\nin The Philippines where malicious attacks and threats perpetrated by State
\nagents, against women human rights defenders (WHRDs) resisting repression and
\noperations of mining companies increased in August 2015 prompting the condemnation
\nof the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRDIC). There are
\nmillions of Bertas around the world that simply cannot be
\nstopped by selected killings, for they are the seed in the persistence of
\nstruggles. <\/p>\n
\nracism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction\u201d, said Berta when she accepted the Goldman
\nEnvironmental Prize. She was only describing the web of complicities and
\nimpunity that prompted her assassination. <\/p>\n
\ndenial of complicity in the violation of human rights and death of Berta
\nCaceres is green-washing corporate neo-colonialism at its finest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"