Rapid Response Network

We wrote  to officials in Honduras about the killing of young Garífuna leader Ricardo Arnaúl Montero, an active member of the Land Defense Committee of Triunfo de la Cruz (CODETT), Tela municipality, Atlántida Department.  He was found dead on the beach on January 29. His body was quickly buried after police preliminarily considered it a drowning.  But then on January 31 authorities ordered an exhumation of the body to perform an autopsy. We have not yet read any results of the autopsy.

In December 2022, he requested protective measures from the Human Rights Secretariat because he had been receiving death threats.  Ricardo Arnaúl Montero and other Garífuna leaders are persecuted because of their opposition to private development projects in Triunfo de la Cruz.

We are urging that authorities in Honduras respect the mandates of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has ruled on more than one occasion in favor of the Garífuna people. We join with them in calling for a process of returning their illegally-seized Atlantic coastal lands to them and immediately put an end to the threats against them

We wrote to officials in Colombia about the assassination of José Antonio Santiago Pérez, president of the Community Action Board of Socuavo Norte in the municipality of Tibú, Norte de Santander Department.  On February 4, José Antonio Santiago Pérez had just left a meeting with his community when he was intercepted by armed individuals who killed him in the village of La Serena, five minutes from Tibú.

His life had been threatened on previous occasions. In an assassination attempt on June 11, 2019, he received three bullet wounds, including one in the head. A series of direct threats continued. On December 25, 2021, he and his security team were attacked while traveling on a main road in Socuavó North. He fled to seek refuge in Cúcuta but eventually returned to his homeland of Socuavo Norte.

In addition to conducting an investigation into the assassination of José Antonio Santiago Pérez,  we are urging that authorities in Colombia implement protection measures for social leaders in Norte de Santander Department and investigate any assassination plots against other social leaders in Norte de Santander.

We wrote to officials in Honduras about the forced displacement of at least 13 families of the Indigenous Lenca community of Nueva Esperanza, located in El Edén, Comayagua Department. On February 2, the Police Investigation Administration (DPI) used heavy machinery to destroy the houses, crops, and few assets that these families possessed, ruining their livelihoods and forcing them to live out on the streets.

The community of Nueva Esperanza had been occupying (“recuperar,” or recovering) this land for over 18 months, after the National Institute of Agriculture (INA), with promises of relocation, forced them to leave their previous peaceful settlement. The community has repeatedly stated that in order to feed their families, they have no choice but to recover land through occupation until they are granted land titles by INA.

We are urging that authorities in Honduras end the legal uncertainties that Indigenous communities have been experiencing around their ability to live on and work their land by issuing property titles and halting all evictions in the meantime.

We wrote to officials in Honduras about the assassination attempt on Abelino Sánchez, regional secretary of the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC), and president of the Aguacatal Peasant Cooperative in Villanueva, Cortés Department. On January 25 at 7pm, two unknown men entered his home in the community of El Aguacate. After saying “we want land,” the two men shot him twice, once in the chest and once in the arm. He was hospitalized for his injuries.

Abelino Sánchez is a member of the National Network of Defenders of Land and Territory (RENADETT). He has accompanied many peasant groups and is a tireless defender of land, territory, and human rights. In particular, the CNTC, which includes five peasant organizations, has been frequently involved in land occupations with large landholders, during which many campesinos have been subjected to violence and intimidation by members of private security forces and police. After the attack, his family commented that as a result of his work to defend the land and environment, Abelino Sánchez had been receiving death threats for approximately two months prior.

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.

We wrote to authorities in Guatemala about a court-ordered community consultation process regarding the mine Progreso VII Derivada, which is operated by a subsidiary of US-based Kappes, Cassidy and Associates (KCA). The gold mine (also known as El Tambor) stretches across parts of two municipalities in Guatemala Department: San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc. It has been controversial since 2011 when the Ministry of Energy and Mines granted a 25-year license for exploration. Since then, local residents have paid the price for their opposition, citing threats to water supplies and the lack of prior consultation. There have been several threats and multiple killings, including a massacre of ten Indigenous Maya Kaqchikel protesters in September 2013. Now that the new consultation process will be starting soon, environmental defenders are reporting a new wave of threats and intimidation in order to dissuade them from participating. The company is also applying pressure, having brought a $400 million claim against the Guatemalan government for suspending the mining permit, claiming the decision violates the Central America Free Trade Agreement. 

We wrote to officials in Honduras about our concern for Marlon Calles, an environmental activist from La Paz, who was the victim of physical violence and intimidation as a result of his work to protect and defend the forest and natural resources of the area around the El Jilguero mountain.

A truck driver ran over him over on January 5. Fortunately, not seriously injured, Marlon Calles picked himself up from the street and confronted the driver. The driver told Marlon Calles that he remembered his face because Marlon had caused him to lose money by blocking the logging road that ascends the mountain. This appears to be a deliberate attack on Marlon Calles in retaliation for his efforts to protect the forest from being destroyed.

We are urging that authorities: 1) investigate the identity (and connection to the local logging company) of the truck driver who ran over Marlon Calles, 2) take measures to guarantee the safety of Marlon Calles and all environmental activists, and 3) investigate and hold accountable illegal logging operations throughout Honduras and stop them from clearcutting the forests

You can read the full letter at

While visiting fellow employees in a neighborhood in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca Department, on January 2, someone shot public employees union leader Mariela Reyes Montenegro from behind and fled on a motorcycle operated by another individual. For 20 years she had served as a leader in the sub-directorate and the women's secretariat of the National Union of Workers and Employees of Public Services, Information Technologies, Communications, Television, Autonomous Corporations, and Decentralized and Territorial Institutes of Colombia (SintraEmsdes). The local union chapter said she was a staunch defender of workers' and women’s rights.

We are urging that authorities: 1) conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the assassination of Mariela Reyes Montenegro, publish the results, and bring those responsible to justice; 2) implement protection measures for social leaders in Cauca Department, and 3) investigate any assassination plots against other union and social leaders in Santander de Quilichao

You can read the full letter at

Five years of persecution of the residents of Guapinol in the Aguán Valley (Colón Department) points to an illegal iron oxide mine owned by Inversiones Los Pinares, located in a carved out slice of the Montaña de Botaderos National Park “Carlos Escaleras.”  Guapinol Environmental Defense Committee members are mourning the recent double assassination of their comrades Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla, gunned down on January 7 while returning from work.

Aly Domínguez was among 32 community leaders falsely accused of crimes by an iron oxide mining company owned by Lenir Pérez and his wife Ana Facussé, daughter of the deceased oligarch and land baron Miguel Facussé, who was also the owner of Dinant. (Dinant is suspected of surveilling and planning assassinations of community leaders in the Aguán Valley; cf our letter of November 23, 2022). Aly Domínguez and Jairo Bonilla had been receiving threats for weeks before their murders. The Municipal Committee in Defense of the Common and Public Goods of Tocoa has denounced since August 2022 a hate and smear campaign that has escalated to surveillance, harassment, and threats against the lives of leaders who oppose the mining concession (granted under the previous presidential administration) because of environmental harms.

In addtion to our repeated call to cancel the mining concession, we demand an independent investigation that is not conducted in Tocoa by the same police and prosecutors responsible for criminalizing the Guapinol environmental defenders. The brother of Aly Domíguez, Reynaldo Domínguez is another of the 32 Guapinol residents criminalized and one of eight who were jailed for 914 days. 

You can read the full letter at

On the night of December 21, 2022, land defender Mauricio Esquivel, 53 years old, was assassinated. He was intercepted while heading to town; his body was dumped, death squad style, on the road the following morning.

Mauricio Esquivel was a member of the Farmers' Agricultural Production Cooperative “El Tranvío,” located outside of Trujillo, in the Aguán Valley region of Colón. The cooperative is in a land dispute with the powerful Dinant corporation which operates a plantation on land that the cooperative says was stolen from them.

Extreme violence like the assassination of Mauricio Esquivel is occurring within the context of criminalization of land defenders and an upsurge of extrajudicial killings. Campesino leaders are labeled as “objects of extermination.”  The threats to them are real. Aguán Valley residents are facing an unprecedented wave of dozens of brazen death squad style murders. The assassins openly advertise the targets as alleged gang members, with blood smeared posters.

We are urging that the State of Honduras take responsibility for protecting land rights defenders and, in addition to investigating the killing of Mauricio Esquivel, implement several important steps: (1) develop mechanisms to stop the murders, violent dispossession, criminalization, persecution, and threats against land rights defenders, (2) investigate the criminalization of defenders who are being labeled as "targets of extermination," (3) instruct representatives of the justice system to abide by the law and not act biasedly in favor of powerful groups that have historically violated the rights of the peasant sector, and (4) instruct the National Police to desist from the siege against land rights defenders

You can read the full letter below.