Honduras: News & Updates

IRTF has great respect for Father Ismael Moreno Coto, the director of the independent media outlet Radio Progreso in San Pedro Sula. The Jesuit priest—known affectionately throughout Honduras as Padre Melo—was the keynote speaker at IRTF’s annual Commemoration of the Martyrs event in Cleveland in 2010, and our staff and IRTF friends have visited him and his staff at Radio Progreso multiple times over the past 14 years.

In a television broadcast on May 5, a TV anchor made a serious false accusation about Father Moreno.  It appears this was an attempt to shape public opinion against Padre Melo, to place doubt in the viewing public as to whether he is someone who can be trusted.  This broadcast comes at a time when Radio Progreso is experiencing a series of threats, extortions, computer hacks, and social media attacks. In a previous smear campaign a few years ago, Padre Melo was falsely accused of receiving "dirty money from drug-related activity and of using Radio Progreso to discredit Honduras."

We are urging that authorities in Honduras conduct a transparent investigation to learn who is behind the defamation campaign against Padre Melo and Radio Progreso.

The campesino families of Cooperativa Agropecuaria Los Laureles in the Bajo Aguá Valley (Tocoa Department) have been fighting for their land stolen by the agro-industrial company Dinant Corporation, owned by the family of the late land baron Miguel Facussé. They have been victims of forced evictions and their leaders have been falsely criminalied.  Good news was delivered to them on March 15: 16 members of the cooperative received a court-ordered dismissal of criminal charges of land usurpation that had been filed by Dinant and the Public Ministry. One of the 16 was posthumously acquitted; José Omar Cruz Tomé, former president of the Los Laureles cooperative, was assassinated on January 18 (cf our letter 22 FEB 2023).

Then just ten days later, they suffered a tragic loss when one of their family members was brutally killed. Armed men shot 22-year-old Emerson Martínez 14 times in broad daylight, just one-half block from his home on March 25. The killing of Emerson Martínez could be a warning sign directed at his step-father Abraham León, who is the spokesperson and legal representative of the Los Laureles cooperative. The family of Emerson Martínez has reported in the last few months of being monitored by unknown men, as well as surveillance by mechanical drones.

María Concepción Hernández and her husband Santos Ortiz, members of the Association for the Development of the Peninsula of Zacate Grande (ADEPZA), have been criminalized on multiple occasions for protecting their land and the privatization of public beaches on the peninsula of Zacate Grande in the community of Playa Blanca. On March 27, Santos H. Ortiz was arrested by Honduran police for unknown reasons. When María Concepción Hernández went to visit him in jail on April 1, she was arrested allegedly because of a pending arrest warrant dating back to August 29, 2019. The police refused to provide any information about their detention to their lawyers and colleagues from ADEPZA, only telling them that she had been transferred to Amapala on El Tigre Island, Valle Department.

Defenders of the ADEPZA organized communities, such as Santos Ortiz and María Concepción Hernández,  have been a benchmark of resistance against the territorial dispossession by large landowners who seek to monopolize all the lands at their disposal using violence, criminalization and corruption. We denounce the systematic judicial persecution against the defenders of the Zacate Grande peninsula, who also in recent weeks have faced a number of incidents in their communities.

Water defenders in the community of Guapinol in Tocoa, Colón Department, have been surveilled, harassed, threatened, and criminalized for the past five years. Some have even been killed. Eight were held in pre-trial detention for more than two years until the Supreme Court dismissed the case and ordered their release in February 2022. Two were assassinated in January of this year (cf our letter 24 JAN 2023).

Now the Public Ministry in Tocoa is trying to re-criminalize five of the water defenders.  Five members of the Municipal Committee in Defense of the Common and Public Goods of Tocoa (Comité Municipal en Defensa de los Bienes Comunes y Públicos, or CMDBCP) are being prosecuted again, even though the criminal proceedings against them were annulled by a court in June 2022. Defenders Juan López, Leonel George, Reynaldo Domínguez, Marco Tulio Ramos, and Adaly Cedillo are once again facing criminal charges.

Leonel George, one of the water defenders, called this criminalization “[evidence that the Tocoa Public Ministry] is protecting itself and that they are doing the job for the interests of the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares/Ecotek.” The government (during the years of the coup dictatorship) carved out a piece of the Carlos Escaleras National Park to allow Los Pinares to construct an iron oxide mine to supply US steelmakers. Contamination from the mine threatens the drinking water, fishing, and agricultural crops of 90,000 residents of the Bajo Aguán Valley.

The violent repression against water defenders in Honduras continues. On February 18, Benigno Maldonado, a member of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), became the 8th water defender killed during the first six weeks of this year.

Benigno Maldonado was a known leader in the resistance movement in Pajuiles opposing the construction of the HIDROCEP hydroelectric dam on the Río Mezapa, near Tela municipality in Atlántida Department. Over the last six years, we have observed, with concern, the violent repression against the Pajuiles community by Military Police, special command squads, and the hydroelectric company itself. Dozens of peaceful land and water defenders have been criminalized, and some killed.

Since 2017, IRTF’s Rapid Response Network has been writing to officials in Honduras in support of the Dignified Camp for the Defense of Water and Life, of which Benigno Maldonado was a key organizer. Our condolences go out to his family and community members over this great loss of a local leader and friend to many in Pajuiles.  

The environmental defense organization ARCAH (Alternative for Community and Environmental Vindication of Honduras) has helped to shine the international spotlight on abuses occurring with the ZEDEs, or charter cities. In August, ARCAH filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, claiming that the ZEDEs are responsible for threatening the environmental, territorial, and human rights of ancestral peoples in Honduras. ARCAH is a vocal opponent of the ZEDE Próspera, where construction of a luxury hotel is destroying the Bay Islands forest and coral reef. In Tegucigalpa, ARCAH has been fighting against the company El Cortijo because its poultry production is contaminating the Choluteca River.

We wrote to officials in Honduras on March 23 to express our concern for the safety of ARCAH member Misael Martínez, who, since 2020, has been enrolled in the National Protection Mechanism due to previous threats and harassment. Last month he was the victim of an attempted kidnapping. As he was walking through a neighborhood in Tegucigalpa to catch a bus, a man in an unknown car started following him, yelling at him and threatened to use force to make him get into his car.  Misael Martínez tried to evade the man by going into several shops and exiting onto different streets, but the stranger was waiting for him and continued yelling angrily at him to get into the car. Fortunately, Misael Martínez was able to escape harm.

The violent repression against water defenders in Honduras continues. On February 18, Benigno Maldonado, a member of the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), became the 8th water defender killed during the first six weeks of this year.

Benigno Maldonado was a known leader in the resistance movement in Pajuiles opposing the construction of the HIDROCEP hydroelectric dam on the Río Mezapa, near Tela municipality in Atlántida Department. Over the last six years, we have observed, with concern, the violent repression against the Pajuiles community by Military Police, special command squads, and the hydroelectric company itself. Dozens of peaceful land and water defenders have been criminalized, and some killed.

Since 2017, IRTF’s Rapid Response Network has been writing to officials in Honduras in support of the Dignified Camp for the Defense of Water and Life, of which Benigno Maldonado was a key organizer. Our condolences go out to his family and community members over this great loss of a local leader and friend to many in Pajuiles.