More environmental activists are killed in Honduras than any other place in the world, according to a new report released Monday by Global Witness.
From 2002 to 2014, there were 111 activists murdered in Honduras while defending land rights and protecting the environment from mining, dam projects and logging. While the overall number of environmental activists killed was higher in Brazil, Honduras is the deadliest per capita.
Berta Cáceres, a Honduran activists and winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, told investigators, "They follow me. They threaten to kill me, to kidnap me, they threaten my family. That is what we face."
Worldwide in 2014, at least 116 environmental activists were killed, more than two per week, up 20 percent from 2013 and almost double the same number of journalists killed in the same period, according to the report.
Latin America accounted for about three-quarters of the total murders in 2014, with 29 reported in Brazil, 25 in Colombia and 12 in Honduras. Over the entire 2002-2014 period, Brazil saw 477 environmental activists killed.
"In Honduras and across the world environmental defenders are being shot dead in broad daylight, kidnapped, threatened, or tried as terrorists for standing in the way of so-called 'development'," Billy Kyte, a campaigner at Global Witness, said in a statement. "The true authors of these crimes - a powerful nexus of corporate and state interests - are escaping unpunished. Urgent action is needed to protect citizens and bring perpetrators to justice."
Forty percent of the victims were indigenous people, most killed over disputes related to hydropower, mining and agri-business. The report noted that many indigenous groups don't possess clear land titles to their land and as a result, suffer land grabs by powerful business interests.
"We aren't going to give up the struggle to keep our natural resources clean and in the hands of the community," a member of the indigenous Tolupán group from Locomapa told Global Witness. "There are those who want easy money by tearing up the land, contaminating the water. We have been here respecting the earth that gives us our good and we intend to stay here fighting for our right to feed ourselves."
Over 90 percent of the killings in Honduras remain unsolved, the report noted.
