Berta Caceres Supporters Attacked in Peaceful March in Honduras

Repression of Honduran social movements continues over a month after the murder of renowned Indigenous leader Berta Caceres, as participants in an international gathering in memory of her life and struggle have suffered attacks allegedly at the hands of the private Honduran company behind the hydroelectric megaproject she and her community have tirelessly resisted for years.

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At least four people were injured by rocks, machete cuts, and other blows when armed agents attacked a group of peaceful demonstrators, including Honduran and foreign activists and children, on Friday afternoon, reported the Canadian delegation, which includes Rights Action Director Grahame Russell, who spoke with teleSUR on Saturday.

According to a statement released by COPINH, the Indigenous resistance movement that Caceres co-founded over two decades ago, the armed attackers were affiliated with the dam company DESA. The corporation has previously been linked to threats and harassment targeting movement leaders and accused of being involved in Caceres’ assassination.

“Our Canadian delegation was eyewitness to the type of repression that the Lenca-descendant peoples of western Honduras have being suffering since 2013, including the assassination of Berta Caceres, as they resist the illegal, violent imposition of the DESA Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project," said Russell.

Russell added that such repression is also characteristic of what "Hondurans have suffered across the country since the 2009 U.S. and Canadian-backed military coup when they resist the illegal and violent imposition of large-scale mining, dam, tourism and African palm production projects.”

A member of the Campesino Movement of Aguan injured in the attack. | Photo: Facebook/Lucia Granados

The violence against the peaceful march reportedly happened in the presence of Honduran police and military personnel, who failed to intervene in the attack. Honduran human rights defenders have repeatedly denounced collusion between state and private security forces to repress Indigenous and campesino movements.

The attack came during the third and final day of a gathering that brought together some 1,300 members of Honduran social movements and international delegations from 22 different countries to demand justice in for Caceres and other victims of repression against activists.

The attack comes after DESA released a statement in the lead-up to the international gathering that was interpreted as a direct threat by members of COPINH, who have long rejected DESA’s work as illegal and illegitimate.

COPINH said the attackers threatened leader Tomas Garcia, saying “let’s attack him.” Caceres was the fifth activist involved in resisting the Agua Zarca dam to be assassinated. The organization holds DESA and the Honduran state responsible for the attack. The group also condemned United States complicity in the ongoing human rights crisis in Honduras.

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Family members and supporters have called for an internationally-led investigation, similar to probe headed by foreign experts into the case of 43 forcibly disappeared Ayotzinapa students in Mexico but Honduran authorities have not responded to these demands.

The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights offered the Honduran government on Friday to send a group of independent experts to investigate Caceres assassination. Honduras has not yet responded to this offer either.

In the closing declaration of the international gathering, groups committed to continuing to fight for truth and justice for Berta Caceres, against the “neoliberal project of death,” and for an end to repressive militarization in Indigenous and campesino territories.