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Environmental activists are being killed in Honduras over their opposition to mining
The Conversation Canada
By Giada Ferrucci
Two men shot Arnold Joaquín Morazán Erazo to death in his home in Tocoa, Honduras, one night in October 2020. Morazán was an environmental activist and one of 32 people criminalized by the Honduran government for defending the Guapinol River against the environmental impacts of a new iron oxide mine in the Carlos Escaleras National Park.
So far, at least eight people who have opposed the mine have been killed, putting its owner, Inversiones Los Pinares, at the centre of a deadly environmental conflict in the mineral-rich Bajo Aguán region. Local communities are concerned about the mine’s potential ecological damage. In their attempts to defend their territories, local leaders have been surveilled, threatened, injured and imprisoned, and some, like Morazán, have been killed.
Honduras is the deadliest place in the world for environmental defenders. Hundreds of them have been killed since 2009, including the Indigenous environmental leader Berta Càceres, who was assassinated in 2016 (continue reading).
