Emmy Nohemy Jiménez Zelaya

Emmy Nohemy Jiménez Zelaya is a woman human rights defender, a member Red Nacional de Defensoras de Derechos Humanos en Honduras (National Women Human Rights Defenders Network in Honduras) and a student at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras – UNAH (National Autonomous University of Honduras) with an active role in Movimiento Amplio Universitario - MAU (Wide University Movement). The movement struggles for fair and free access to education, student participation in the management of the UNAH, and against the militarisation of the University. In 2014, when UNAH approved several changes in its internal norms resulting in restricted access to the right to education, the student movement mobilised and engaged in widespread peaceful protests.

Since 2016, the UNAH student movement has faced escalating repression by university authorities, that have resorted to banning demonstrations, the use of police and elite corps forces as well as private security to suppress manifestations, and the criminalisation of students with the aim of dismantling and delegitimizing student organizations. Emmy Nohemy Jiménez Zelaya and other students have been detained, suspended from University and face criminal proceedings as a result of their peaceful protests.

On 23 June 2017, Roberto Antonio Gómez, the father of a student detained in May 2016 along with Emmy Nohemy, Andy Johan Gómez Jerónimo, was murdered while traveling to his house in La Esperanza. In the previous four weeks, he had been active in denouncing the state security forces’ repression of UNAH students. Human rights defenders and organizations in Honduras believe that his murder is related to his role in defence of the work of his son and of other human rights defenders in the country.