To the national and international community, we denounce the brutal murder of two compañeros of the Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO)

On December 20 2006, Heraldo Zuñiga and Roger Ivan Cartagena were extrajudicially executed by National Police agents outside the Mayor’s Office in the municipality of Guarizama, in front of local residents.

On Tuesday, only two days before his murder, our compañero Heraldo had shared his concern about death threats received from Salama-based loggers employed by the Sansone logging company. MAO had denounced these individuals for harassing and threatening to murder Heraldo and others before the tribunals. The Inter-American Human Rights Court ordered the Honduran government to provide protective measures. We now see the results.

The murder was carried out by Salama-based police seargeant Juan Lanza, who brought the two murdered men to Guarizama, where his accomplices finished the job. Considering these facts, there is not much to hope for in a state in which the public security forces are made up of assassins paid by the shadiest interests in the country – the logging and mining sectors.

Both compañeros were left lying outside in the municipal plaza in the center of town. Heraldo did not die immediately and was thus able to denounce the loggers for paying seargeant Juan Lanza to ambush and murder them.

We denounce the terrorist state created by the police in northern Olancho, paid for by logging and mining interests with the goal of destroying the organizations that defend the rights of communities and indigenous peoples. This occurs with the complicity of the Honduran State.

We demand an immediate serious and transparent investigation into these murders, and that those responsible be brought to justice – not only those responsible for the deaths of Heraldo and Roger, but for many more who have fallen due to assassins’ bullets. Honduras has been a weak State with incompetent institutions that has never been capable of honouring the struggle of these leaders with the justice they deserve. If you have forgotten them, we are refering to Jeanette Kawas, Carlos Luna and many others.

We will take our denouncement and cry for justice to the international level against the State of Honduras, because the State’s incompetence and inaction has led to the murder of two honest and brave citizens whose only ‘sin’ by being environmental movement leaders was defending the interests of Hondurans and all of humanity.

Yet once more it is clear that the Environmental Movement of Olancho’s motto still holds relevance:

BECAUSE LIFE IS DEFENDED WITH LIFE

Global Response Environmental Action & Education Network [1]