We wrote to officials in Honduras about the double assassination on January 18 of campesino leader José Omar Cruz Tomé and his father-in-law Andy Martínez Murillo in Tocoa, Colón, in the Bajo Aguán Valley.
José Omar Cruz Tomé was the president of the Los Laureles Campesino Cooperative. Residents of Los Laureles and other campesino cooperatives in the area have been subject to constant threats from and attacks by a private security company that works for the Dinant Corporation. According to the Plataforma Agraria, the mining company Inversiones los Pinares/Ecotek (owned by Lenir Pérez and Ana Facussé) and the Dinant Corporation (also owned by the Facussé family) are the main generators of violence and human rights violations against defenders of water and land in the Bajo Aguán region. Dinant’s security company is known to coordinate its operations with paramilitary groups that have acted with impunity in the region for the past decade.