Fighting for water

For the families of eight water protectors in Honduras, there will be no holiday season this year. They will continue to fight for the freedom of their loved ones who have each been jailed for up to two years for participating in a struggle to keep iron ore mining out of the headwaters of the rivers they depend on.

“It is the start of a new stage of struggle, a stage of unity and we are not going to stay at home,” said Juana Zúniga, the wife of one of the eight imprisoned water protectors, during a December 21 press conference, “The joy of spending Christmas with family has been taken away from us, but we will nonetheless continue fighting. We will continue struggling for the freedom of our compañeros.”

These members of the Municipal Committee in Defense of the Public Commons of Tocoa in northern Honduras were illegally jailed for defending the Carlos Escaleras National Park and the Guapinol and San Pedro rivers against the threat of a mining project owned by Honduran company Inversiones Los Pinares. In October 2019, recognizing the importance of their struggle, the Institute for Policy Studies awarded the Committee with the international Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights award.

Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, José Abelino Cedillo, Orbin Naún Hernández, Kelvin Alejandro Romero, Arnol Javier Aleman, Ewer Alexander Cedillo, and Daniel Márquez have spent 15 months in preventive detention since September 2019. Another Committee member, Jeremías Martínez Díaz, has been in the same situation for two years, since December 2018.

A recent report from the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Virginia describes how Los Pinares filed accusations against a total of 32 individuals after communities set up a peaceful encampment to protect their water from the company’s mining project, which lasted 87 days in 2018. Violence carried out at this time by security guards hired by the mine in collaboration with armed agents from the local municipality who are also linked to the company and that led to the injury of one of the protesters has never been investigated.

According to the University of Virginia, there have been numerous irregularities in the legal process against the eight detained defenders to date, including that “The Public Prosecutor has not presented convincing evidence to support such an extreme measure [of preventative detention], nor proof to justify the prolonged detention of the community leaders.” According to their lawyers, the company has falsely accused them of aggravated arson, and unlawful detention, which are not cause for preventative detention. Furthermore, the men voluntarily presented themselves to the court, evidence that they would not try to flee if freed.

But, as one of the lawyers for the eight, Efraín Rodríguez, said on Monday, “In Honduras, preventative detention has become the norm, rather than the exception.” Or, at least for people who are defending water.

Excerpted: ‘No Holiday for Honduran Anti-Mining Activists Fighting for Freedom’

Commondreams.org