Honduras: News & Updates

October 26, Indigenous Tolupán tribal leader Reinaldo Baharona Reyes he was given a national award for his environmental defense, named the Carlos Escaleras National Prize.  Despite the national honor, Reinaldo Baharona Reyes still faces threats of criminalization and imprisonment. 

Reinaldo Baharona Reyes is president of the Las Vegas tribe of Tepemechín in Victoria, Yoro Department. The tribe’s territory has been threatened by landowners linked to cattle ranching, loggers, and miners, who have decades-long legacy of controlling mayors' offices and using them as organized crime structures to dispossess the Tolupán. When bribes and tribal division do not work, tribal council leaders have been assassinated. Indigenous people have been dehumanized as just another species by those who covet land.

Reinaldo Baharona Reyes went to court in Victoria on November 4 to address the criminal complaints against him. His attorney says that he is at risk and needs the special attention of the authorities to guarantee his safety to do his human rights work.

Members of the Coordinator of Popular Organizations (COPA) and the Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ) announced in a press conference that agribusiness corporations like Dinant have a plan to assassinate the peasant leadership in El Aguán who are fighting to secure access to their ancestral lands. Sources say the agribusiness companies have carried out surveillance to monitor the movements of the leadership and have devised a plot to murder the leadership of the Agrarian Platform—and then blame it on common street-crime violence. The names of the threatened leaders are: Jaime Cabrera, Jony Rivas, Héctor Murillo, José Cruz, Santos Pérez, Alexander Garcia, José Garcia, William Sorto and Esly Banegas.

We are urging that authorities in Honduras: (1) safeguard the life and personal integrity of the campesino leadership in El Aguán Valley, in strict accordance with their wishes, (2) initiate an investigation against businessman Miguel Mauricio de la Soledad Facussé Saenz, leader of Corporación Dinant, who has been accused of implementing the plan to assassinate the peasant leadership.

Despite a court order to stop expansion of its open-pit gold mining operations in La Unión, Miami-based Aura Minerals continues the destruction of an Indigenous Maya Chortí community in Copán Department in western Honduras. At the heart of the matter for local residents is the contamination of vital water sources and the destruction of their 200-year-old Azacualpa community cemetery. As we described in previous letters (cf December 2, 2021; January 25, April 11, July 21, 2022) army and police were deployed to ensure the exhumations of graves, to facilitate expansion of the San Andrés gold mine, which is owned by US- and Canada-based Aura Minerals and operated by its Honduran subsidiary MINOSA (Minerales de Occidente SA). On March 30, 2022, the government of Honduras ordered MINOSA to stop its operations, but the destruction has continued. In early November, the Supreme Court of Justice in Tegucigalpa admitted a writ of habeas corpus filed by lawyers on behalf of community residents, demanding from the Ministry of Health and the mining company to disclose the location of the illegally exhumed bodies.

We wrote to authorities in Honduras, urging them to: (1) guarantee that the appointed executing judges effectively locate the exhumed corpses of the Azacualpa cemetery, (2) support and adopt all decisions necessary to return those corpses to the cemetery in La Unión, Copán, and (3) order an immediate retreat of the mining company MINOSA and all its affiliates, including armed forces, from the cemetery hill and the local community and revoke any outstanding mining approvals for the company

Environmentalist Christopher Castillo has, since January 2020, been a beneficiary of Security Measures from the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders in Honduras, due to previous attempts on his life and repeated death threats he has received. Christopher is the general coordinator of ARCAH (Alternative for Community and Environmental Vindication of Honduras).

ARCAH has been a thorn in the side of private development investors whose money is pouring into the controversial ZEDEs (Zones of Employment and Economic Development, also known as “Model Cities,” or “Charter Cities”). Recently, ARCAH has been denouncing that the Bay Islands forest is being destroyed by construction of a luxury hotel in Roatán by the ZEDE Próspera, just a few meters from the coral reef. ZEDE board members and executives are harassing and threatening Christopher Castillo.

The statistics on violent crimes against members of the sexual diversity community are alarming. Since the coup d’etat in 2009, there have been 131 transgender persons killed in Honduras.

Melissa Núñez, age 25, was born as Kelvin Núñez. She was a well-known human rights defender. Because of her activism for sexual and gender minorities, Melissa had a strong following on social media, with over 20,000 followers on TikTok. As Melissa was walking to her home in Morocelí, El Paraíso Department, on October 19, unknown hooded assassins got out of a car and shot her several times—in the middle of the afternoon.  She died as the result of two gunshots to her head.

Melissa Núñez became the 34th LGBTI+ person killed in Honduras this year, and the 434th member of the sexual diversity community murdered since the 2009 coup d’etat.  The rate of impunity for crimes against the sexual diversity community is 91%.

Melissa Núñez, ¡presente!

Journalist Edwin Josué Andino Canaca, age 23, was brutally murdered in Comayagüela, Francisco Morazán Department, on the morning of Monday, October 10. After being kidnapped from his home in the Villa Franca neighborhood, his dead body was found on a street in the same neighborhood. He was wearing underwear, his mouth covered with adhesive tape. There were several gunshots to his face.

This was a double homicide. His father, Edwin Emilio Andino Amador, age 48, was also kidnapped from the same house. Witnesses reported that the journalist and his father were taken by force by several individuals in police clothing, driving in a vehicle similar to a police patrol car. His father was found murdered in the Policarpo Paz García neighborhood, about 15 kilometers away.

This murder brings the total of journalists slain in Honduras this year to five. Of the nearly 100 journalists killed over the past 20 years, only 18 cases have been prosecuted.

Edwin Josué Andino Canaca and Edwin Emilio Andino Amador, ¡presente!