Berta Cáceres Assassinated (2016)
Wed Mar 02, 2016
Image: A photo of Berta Cáceres, unknown year [Wikipedia]
Berta Cáceres was a Honduran environmental and indigenous activist who was assassinated on this day in 2016 by a squad of hitmen with ties to the Honduran military, an energy company she campaigned against, and the U.S. government.
Cáceres was a co-founder and leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), coordinating protests on a wide variety of issues, including protesting illegal logging, plantation owners, and the presence of U.S. military bases on Lenca land. She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world's largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque.
As of 2018, nine people have been arrested for Cáceres' murder. Of these nine, one was the executive president of the company building the dam which Cáceres campaigned against, accused of masterminding the plot; four had ties to the Honduran Military; two had received military training at the former "School of the Americas" in Fort Benning, Georgia, linked to thousands of murders and human rights violations throughout Latin America.
"Nature and justice at some point must be interwoven."
- Berta Cáceres
- Date: 2016-03-02
- Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.goldmanprize.org, www.youtube.com.
- Tags: #Assassinations, #Indigenous, #Protests.
- Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org