Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Gustavo
Castro Witnessed the Murder of Berta Cáceres. That Means His Life Is in Danger.
In the face of silence from Washington, the
Clinton-backed coup government in Honduras is mopping up activists for
democracy and indigenous rights.
(Photo: Hondurasdelegation / Flickr)
The sole eyewitness to Honduran social
movement leader Berta Cáceres’ assassination on March 3, 2016 has gone from
being wounded victim to, effectively, political prisoner.
Now Gustavo Castro Soto may also be framed as
the murderer of his long-time friend.
Mexico’s ambassador to Honduras, Dolores
Jiménez, and Castro himself are worried that the Mexican national will be
charged by the government for the killing, they told the National Commission of Human Rights of Honduras on
March 16.
"No matter where one is or with whom one
works, activists are not safe in Honduras."
A writer and organizer for environmental and
economic justice, Castro has been forbidden by local authorities from leaving
the country to return to his native Mexico until April 6, at least. Since being
released from several days in Honduran government custody, he has been forced
to take refuge in the Mexican embassy in Tegucigalpa. The protection of the
Mexican Embassy “does not mean that my life is no longer in danger,” Castro
wrote to some friends and colleagues on March 4. As long as he is on Honduran
soil, he remains in peril. Ambassador Jiménez called the risk he is running “an objective fact.”
Castro — who, as the lone witness to the
murder, is able to identify Cáceres’ killer — is an impediment to the plan that
the Honduran government is clearly advancing, which is to pin the murder on
members of the group which Cáceres founded and ran: the Civic Council of
Popular and Indigenous Organizations, orCOPINH. So the fraudulently elected Honduran regime may
dispense with Castro by charging and arresting him.
The government may also charge COPINH members
with the killing of their leader, in the hopes of eliminating them from the
body politic. Authorities tried to incriminate three of them just after the
murder.
Prominent COPINH organizer Aureliano Molina
was imprisoned for two days on suspicion of a “crime of passion,” though he was
two hours away from La Esperanza, the location of the killing, on the night of
March 3. Two other COPINH leaders, Tomas Gómez and Sotero Echeverria, were
interrogated for days, during which time the government denied their request
for accompaniment by their lawyers. On March 15, Echeverria was threatened with
arrest.
The Real Assassins
Cáceres was a tireless organizer for
accountable government, participatory democracy, indigenous peoples and their
territories, human rights, and women’s and LGBTQ rights. For many years, she
was subject to threats, attempted violent attacks, legal prosecution for being
a “continual danger to the nation,” and other persecution.
During the three-month period prior to
Cáceres’ murder, human rights accompaniers tracked 11 threats and attempted assaults
by national and local government officials, police, soldiers, employees of the
Agua Zarca dam project (which Cáceres and others were fighting), and
unidentified men. And within 10 days of Cáceres’ death, Agua Zarca released
incendiary public email announcements blasting the alleged “falsehoods of Berta
Cáceres” and COPINH.
Those who have witnessed the price Cáceres
has paid for her decades of advocacy have no doubt who is culpable in her
murder. Her four grown children and mother stated publicly on March 5, “We hold
DESA” — the company behind the dam — and “the international financial
organizations backing the project responsible” for the “constant death threats
against Berta, us, and COPINH. We hold the Honduran state responsible for
obstructing Berta’s protection and for contributing to her persecution,
criminalization, and murder.”
Castro’s Ordeal
Many elements of the government’s so-called
collection of evidence from Castro have been irregular at best, and illegal at
worst.
Beyond being inconvenient for knowing too
much, the eyewitness falls into the repressive government’s category of public
enemy. Like Cáceres, Castro has been a vocal opponent of dam
construction on indigenous rivers, as well as of the broad powers
given to transnational corporations and the local elite to undermine democracy
and plunder the riches of nature.
Castro is coordinator of the group Otros
Mundos/Friends of the Earth Mexico. He cofounded — and sits on the governing
bodies of — many anti-mining and anti-damming networks, as well as the
U.S.-based organization Other Worlds. In his interrogation, the public
prosecutor asked Castro about his environmental organizing and history of
activism.
Following the killing in Cáceres’ home in the
town of La Esperanza, Castro was detained for days in the local public
prosecutor’s office for interrogation. On March 5, having been told the
questioning was complete, he was transported by the Mexican ambassador and
consul to the airport in Tegucigalpa so that he could return to his homeland.
As he approached the migration checkpoint, Castro was set upon by multiple
Honduran police, who attempted to grab him. The Mexican ambassador stopped
them.
The government has since forbidden Castro
from leaving Honduras for 30 days, or until April 6. When Castro appealed the
order, the judge in the case ruled against it, even while admitting that there
is no legal provision for a 30-day restraint for witnesses or victims.
The judge also suspended the license of
Castro’s lawyer, Ivania Galeano, for 15 days. The stated reason was that
Galeano had requested a copy of Castro’s file — which, according to Honduran
law, was her right.
Even in the Mexican embassy, almost three
weeks after the killing, Castro continues to be interrogated by the Honduran
prosecutor.
Hearing No Protest from the U.S.,
Honduran Government Ramps Up Repression
The U.S. State Department put out a brief,
generic statement of condolence the day after
Cáceres was assassinated. At the same time, according to email communications,
the State Department confirmed that it is cooperating with the Honduran
government in the investigation, with various U.S. agencies actively
participating in it.
The Obama administration has failed to raise
questions about the Honduran government’s role in the murder, despite its
persistent, well-documented targeting of Cáceres over the years, and its
transparent attempts at a cover-up by fingering Cáceres’ close colleagues. U.S.
military assistance to the illegitimate Honduran coup government continues
to flow.
On March 17, 62 U.S. congressional
representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry calling
for an independent investigation of the assassination and urging the secretary
to immediately stop U.S. security funding pending a review. Representative Hank
Johnson, co-sponsor of the letter along with Representative Keith Ellison,
said, “It’s time for our government to leverage security assistance and
multilateral loans so as to put real and lasting pressure on the Honduran
government to protect its activists and pursue those responsible for these
hideous crimes.”
Meanwhile, the silence from the
administration has given the Honduran government a green light for repression.
That repression was aggressively
escalated on March 15. On that single day, Honduran soldiers and police
coordinated assaults against 10 activists from four geographic regions and
three separate organizations. Nelson García, a COPINH leader, was assassinated
during a violent government eviction of the community of Rio Chiquito. In the
capital, three hit men shot and wounded Christian Mauricio Alegría, who works
with the global peasant movement La Via Campesina. His uncle, Rafael Alegría,
is a deputy in the national parliament from the opposition Libre Party, and is
former secretary general of La Via Campesina. José Flores, head of the United
Movement of the Peasants of the Aguan (MUCA), was temporarily arrested along
with family members in the town of Tocoa.
The message was clear to all. No matter where
one is or with whom one works, activists are not safe in Honduras.
From the Mexican embassy on March 15, Castro
sent out a note of condolence and support to the Honduran people. He closed the
missive this way: “Soon there will be justice.”
© 2015 Foreign Policy In Focus
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to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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