Honduras protest

Honduran Indigenous Social Movement leaders being criminalized two months before Honduras elections

COPINH is the Indigenous organization of the indigenous Lenca people of Rio Blanco. Since April 1, they have blocked the construction of an illegal hydroelectric dam in their territory after the dam company destroyed their crops and threatened their lives.

Since May 17, the U.S.-funded Honduran military has occupied the area to protect DESA and the Chinese company SINOHYDRO's corporate interests and threatened the Lenca population. U.S.-funded Honduran soldiers have killed, shot, slashed with machetes, kidnapped and terrorized members of the 400-family Rio Blanco community. Resistance leaders are being framed as criminal, violent and armed usurpers of land.

The persecution of Berta Cáceres, Tomás Gómez and Aureliano Molina is the latest escalation of an intense criminalization campaign by the Honduran government and the multinational DESA Corporation, aimed at destroying the Lenca people's resistance to the pilling of their natural resources for corporate profit.

Demands:

1. Retract the conviction of Berta, Tomás and Aureliano

2. Stop the eviction of the blockade in Rio Blanco

3. Cease construction of the illegal dam, Agua Zarca

4. Respect ancestral lands and international conventions, which protect indigenous people

5. End the repression and violence against Resistance leaders, especially the Rio Blanco community.

Sponsor: Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition