Attacks and Threats
March 13, 2021, Movimiento Amplio (https://www.facebook.com/MovAmplioHn/)
Our colleague Héctor Antonio Trigueros, community and environmental defender from Azacualpa (La Unión, Copán), suffered an attack in which his motorcycle was seriously damaged, while he was unharmed. According to Hector, he was at a friend's house and left his motorcycle parked when a vehicle ran over it. "A 2.5 vehicle, with license plate PDP 3572, wiped out my motorcycle I had it parked outside my friend's house, leaving my motorcycle in a bad state".
Hector is one of the main community defenders in Azacualpa, a place where the US-based mining company Aura Minerals has been cyanide-leaching, open-pit mining for years, and where it intends to mine the El Cementerio hill – local inhabitants are fully opposed to this. Recently, Hector was a speaker at a public forum addressing the communities' struggle to avoid being illegally dispossessed of their territories, including the destruction of their 200 year-old cemetery.
In addition, Hector recently denounced that guards working for Aura Minerals/MINOSA were stationed in front of his house, as if keeping watch.
Illegal drilling and contamination
Azacualpa Resists (https://www.facebook.com/azacualparesiste/)
Despite the fact that the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras ordered - in its 2020 ruling – protection of our cemetery and the halt of illegal exhumations of our loved ones, we have found pools water contaminated with burnt oil one meter away from the gravesite, and drilling machines - carried out by the company Aura Minerals (USA)/ Minosa.
Explosions and cracks
Azacualpa Resists (https://www.facebook.com/azacualparesiste/)
Dynamite explosions are causing material, physical and psychological damage to homes and people. Aura Minerals (USA)/ Minosa is executing, every 24 hours, explosions regardless of the damages it generates. We are living in hell, within a deafening silence on the part of the government authorities.
- View report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIq1RWO7Q0g
Mining impunity & corruption, enabled by US & Canadian governments and military-backed Honduran regime
For many years, Rights Action has been directly supporting the Azacualpa Environmental Committee, in its land and environment, human rights and cemetery defense struggle against the corrupt, repressive mining activities of the US-based Aura Minerals (with an office in Canada, trading on Toronto Stock Exchange) and Aura’s Honduran subsidiary MINOSA.
Learn more
Azacualpa Environmental Community struggle in defense of land, rights and cemetery:
- Archives: https://rightsaction.org/aura-minerals-archives
- Photo Gallery: https://rightsaction.org/aura-minerals-photos
- “Story Behind the Story: What Aura Minerals didn't want us to see in Azacualpa” (2017), 4 minute film by Maggie Padlewska: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1uY6E6zs7Q
- “Where even the Dead can’t rest” (2019), 6 minute film by Trocaire: https://vimeo.com/365482741
- “La Fiera de Azacualpa: Resistiendo la avaricia y destrucción de Aura Minerals” (2019): https://youtu.be/o42NDTIgAFM
Honduran political, human rights issues: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/honduras_daily
Aura Minerals/MINOSA
info@auraminerals.com / +1 305-239-9332 / www.auraminerals.com
- 78 SW 7th St, Aura Minerals @ WeWork, Miami, FL 33130, USA
- Craigmuir Chambers, PO Box 71, VG1110, British Virgin Islands
Rodrigo Barbosa, President & CEO, rbarbosa@auraminerals.com;
Sergio Castanho, SCastanho@auraminerals.com;
João Kleber Cardoso, kcardoso@auraminerals.com;
Richmond Fenn, rfenn@auraminerals.com;
Monty Reed, mreed@auraminerals.com;
Board
Rodrigo Barbosa, President & CEO, rbarbosa@auraminerals.com;
Stephen Keith, snskeith@gmail.com;
Philip Reade, philip.reade@outlook.com;
Mas informacion - Honduras
- Hector Antonio Trigueros, Comité Ambientalista de Azacualpa, https://www.facebook.com/azacualparesiste/
- Bufete de Estudios para la Dignidad, Lic. Victor Hernandez, sanjuanvic@yahoo.com, direccion@bufetedignidad.org
- Grahame Russell, Rights Action, info@rightsaction.org
- Karen Spring, Honduras Solidarity Network, spring.kj@gmail.com
