At about 6pm on Wednesday 26 February, Ana Luiza Hernández Raudelez noticed her companion, Juan Bautista Silva, 70, obtain a cellphone name. A land defender who had spent greater than 20 years working for the native surroundings, Silva was making ready to depart on a bike journey to {photograph} unlawful logging close to Las Botijas, in Comayagua, central Honduras, to assist a grievance to the prosecutor’s workplace.
As he was about to set off, Ana recommended he take their son, Juan Antonio Hernández, 20, with him, as his new cell phone took higher pictures.
The boys stated they’d in all probability be dwelling by 8pm. At midnight, their apprehensive household known as the authorities, sparking a search.
The following day, father and son have been discovered lifeless and dismembered beneath a cliff near Las Botijas.
One in all Silva’s sons found the physique elements. The boys’s our bodies had been dismembered with chainsaws and their stays left on the foot of the cliff. Silva’s torso and arms haven’t been discovered, whereas Antonio’s head stays lacking.
The murders are a recent reminder of the extreme violence confronted by nature defenders in Honduras, which in 2023 grew to become the nation with the best variety of defenders killed per capita on the planet.
Selvin David Ventura Hernández, one in every of Juan’s sons, believes that the cellphone name, from an unknown quantity, is the start line for explaining the harrowing deaths. The household believes the particular person making the decision was impersonating the authorities. “My father didn’t suppose something of it,” says Ventura. “Within the second, none of us did.”
Now, the household says, they’re dwelling in worry. They hardly ever go outdoors and are contemplating shifting home. “By killing my father, they anticipated to terminate the actions in opposition to logging within the area. They usually have been profitable; none of us will comply with in his footsteps,” Ventura says. “However what they didn’t anticipate is that we’re demanding justice. They’re now ready for this to blow over and for our justice system to fail us. However we’re preventing.”
Silva’s kinfolk say he had beforehand been attacked with a machete, in March 2020, which resulted in a extreme damage to his proper arm and 6 days in hospital. Additionally they declare he had repeatedly approached the prosecutor’s workplace to complain about unlawful logging actions, however motion was hardly ever taken.
After the murders, the Honduran institute for forest conservation (ICF) issued an announcement condemning the “violent acts”, describing the 2 males’s deaths as “tragic” and asking for investigation and safety of “those that report environmental crimes in defence of the surroundings”.
In 2023, the NGO World Witness reported a complete of 196 murders and enforced disappearances of land defenders internationally. Honduras, tied with Mexico, had the third-highest variety of violent land defender deaths (18), behind Brazil (25) and Colombia (79) – which makes Honduras essentially the most harmful nation in relative to inhabitants numbers.
Analysis additionally reveals that at the least 131 land and environmental defenders have been murdered in Honduras between 2012 and 2022, with 70 of those deaths occurring since 2016.
Laura Furones, a senior adviser at World Witness, says Honduras emerges “fairly recurrently” as a “worrying nation” for land defenders’ rights. Among the many elements behind the excessive fee of violence in opposition to land defenders, she explains, is the presence of pure assets, which can be exploited for agricultural functions or company pursuits.
Furones additionally says Honduras is dwelling to a “pretty vocal civil society”, together with Indigenous activist teams. In quite a lot of circumstances, she says, “making an attempt to take a stand and making an attempt to guard these lands and assets” may end up in violence.
Activists who’re perceived to “get in the way in which of those pursuits” might threat being attacked as nicely, she says.
World Witness figures align with these compiled by native authorities. On the finish of February, Honduras’ human rights fee (Conadeh) revealed that 35 land defenders have suffered violent deaths within the nation since 2022.
Frank Cruz, Conadeh’s coordinator of the Workplace of the Ombudsman for Indigenous and Afro-Honduran individuals, says circumstances just like the demise of Silvas and his son will additional dissuade land defenders from reporting environmental crimes. “The message despatched is: ‘don’t report, as a result of in case you report, you may be killed.’”
Cruz believes there are a number of explanation why many Hondurans resolve to not report environmental crimes. He says the state “doesn’t have ample capability” to reply to complaints, whereas some individuals dwelling in distant territories “have no idea their rights” and are unaware of the safety to which they’re entitled.
Others, Cruz says, have confronted threats of violence. In accordance with him, impunity is contributing to the normalisation of violence in opposition to land defenders in Honduras.
“If the aggressors or perpetrators of those crimes, deaths and acts of violence knew they’d face investigation, fees, and prosecution by the hands of state organs, they’d not commit these crimes,” Cruz says, including that the federal government must implement medium- and long-term measures to “regain the arrogance” of such communities. “The much less impunity there’s, the much less normalisation. The extra prosecution there’s, the extra consciousness.”
Mauro Lara, the coordinator of neighborhood forest improvement on the ICF, labored with Juan as a part of a forestry cooperative. In accordance with Lara, whereas he has by no means formally registered any threats within the area the place Juan was working, it’s doubtless that land defenders have confronted them. “Usually, persons are afraid to confront, or talk about, loggers. They’re feared within the area,” he says.
The nation has beforehand confronted condemnation for its dealing with of environmentalists’ murders. In April 2009, Honduras was sentenced by the Inter-American court docket for the demise of Blanca Jeannette Kawas Fernández, an environmental activist who was shot and killed in February 1995.
Kawas had publicly opposed unlawful logging and financial initiatives to be applied on the Punta Sal Peninsula on the northern coast. At the least one agent of the state was discovered by the court docket to have been concerned in her demise.
In March 2016, environmental activist Berta Cáceres was shot lifeless, sparking violent clashes. Previous to her demise, Cáceres had been concerned in efforts to stop the development of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, thought of sacred by the Lenca Indigenous neighborhood.
Cáceres, the winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental prize, had lengthy confronted threats and was discovered to have been killed by hitmen.
The homicide of Juan López – an anti-mining activist, water defender, and native spiritual chief – in September 2024 sparked worldwide condemnation, together with from the Biden administration and the pope.
López was driving dwelling from church when a gaggle of males shot him. Since 2018, López had been advocating in opposition to a mining mission within the Carlos Escaleras nationwide park, named in reminiscence of one other Honduran environmentalist, who was murdered in October 1997.
Over a month has handed since Silvas’ and Antonio’s deaths. No suspects have been arrested. There have been no updates since 19 March, when police commissioner Miguel Martínez stated that the case was “now within the palms of the general public prosecutor’s workplace”, including that “every thing is shifting forwards”.
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