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Honduras' Famed Environmental and Rights Activist Assassinated
Hondura’s most famed activist, Berta Cáceres was found murdered in her home on Thursday 3rd March which prompted furious protests over the authorities who failed to protect her.
Cáceres received the Goldman Environmental Prize last year and was leading a campaign against a hydroelectric dam project.
She had frequently gotten death threats in the week leading up to her murder and her many supporters insist that it was an assassination arranged by the business and political interests who were behind the dam project, although police are claiming that it was a “botched robbery.”
Honduras is the world’s most dangerous place to be an environmental campaigner; last year alone it was found that 101 activists were killed there between 2010 and 2014.
In 2013 Cáceres told Al Jazeera;
“The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top. I want to live, there are many things I still want to do in this world but I have never once considered giving up fighting for our territory, for a life with dignity, because our fight is legitimate. I take lots of care but in the end, in this country where there is total impunity I am vulnerable... When they want to kill me, they will do it.”
Cáceres’ daughter, Berta Isabel Zúñiga Cáceres also said in an interview that she holds the company that wanted to build the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam responsible for her mother’s death. She went on to say it is, “very easy to pay people to commit murders in Honduras, but those who are behind this are other powerful people with money and an apparatus that allows them to commit these crimes" and that "they had paid assassins on several occasions to kill her."
