Charges Dropped Against Honduras Dam Opponent

Mem­bers of COPINH, an indige­nous campesino move­ment defend­ing lands and rivers in Hon­duras against dams and oth­er threats

Mem­bers of COPINH, an indige­nous campesino move­ment defend­ing lands and rivers in Hon­duras against dams and oth­er threats

June 25 2013

After an eight-hour hear­ing on June 13, a court in San­ta Bár­bara, the cap­i­tal of the west­ern Hon­duran depart­ment of the same name, sus­pend­ed a legal action against indige­nous leader Berta Isabel Cáceres Flo­res for the alleged ille­gal pos­ses­sion of a weapon. Accord­ing to Cáceres’ lawyer, Marceli­no Martínez, the court found that there was not enough evi­dence to pro­ceed with the case. Cáceres, who coor­di­nates the Civic Coun­cil of Grass­roots and Indige­nous Orga­ni­za­tions of Hon­duras (COPINH), is now free to trav­el out of the coun­try, although the case could still be reopened. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from some 40 orga­ni­za­tions came to the city on June 13 in an expres­sion of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activist.

Cáceres was arrest­ed along with COPINH radio com­mu­ni­ca­tor Tómas Gómez Mem­breño on May 24 when a group of about 20 sol­diers stopped their vehi­cle and claimed to find a pis­tol under a car seat [see Update #1178, where we gave the date incor­rect­ly as May 25]. Cáceres and Gómez Mem­breño had been vis­it­ing Lenca com­mu­ni­ties that were protest­ing the Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric project. The leader of the mil­i­tary patrol, First Bat­tal­ion of Engi­neers com­man­der Col. Mil­ton Amaya, explic­it­ly linked the arrests to the activists’ polit­i­cal work: the Hon­duran online pub­li­ca­tion Pro­ce­so Dig­i­tal report­ed that Amaya “accused Cáceres of going around harangu­ing indige­nous res­i­dents of a bor­der region between San­ta Bár­bara and Intibucá known as Río Blan­co so that they would oppose the build­ing of the Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric dam.”

Accord­ing to SOA Watch—a US-based group that mon­i­tors the West­ern Hemi­sphere Insti­tute for Secu­ri­ty Coop­er­a­tion (WHINSEC), for­mer­ly the US Army School of the Amer­i­c­as (SOA)—Amaya has stud­ied at the school on two occa­sions. (Pro­ce­so Dig­i­tal 5/26/13; Adi­tal (Brazil) 6/14/13; Kaos en la Red 6/14/13 from COPINH, Radio Mun­do Real, Hon­duras Libre, Dere­chos Humanos; SOA Watch 6/21/13)