Lawyers Group: DESA executives instigated Berta Cáceres' murder

A group of five international lawyers investigating the murder of Berta Cáceres has concluded that three senior executives of Desarrollos Energeticos (DESA) instigated and ordered the murder of Berta Cáceres in Honduras.  In the report, to be published on Tuesday, the lawyers wrote:

"The existing proof is conclusive regarding the participation of numerous state agents, high-ranking executives and employees of Desa in the planning, execution and cover-up of the assassination."

The evidence that allowed them to reach this conclusion are 40,000 pages of text linked to telephones belonging to two of the accused murderers, plus another phone confiscated from the DESA offices.  One of the phones belonged to Sergio Rodriguez, the Environment director for DESA.  The other phone belonged to Douglas Geovany Bustillo, a retired military officer who reported to the Director of Security for DESA. These text messages were provided by court order by the Public Prosecutor's office in Honduras.  The Public Prosecutor's Office has had the text messages since April and May, 2016, but have taken no apparent action in the case to pursue those who ordered the murder of Cáceres. Those messages show that two of the group accused of her murder, Rodgriguez and Bustillo, remained in frequent contact with three senior DESA executives via text and WhatsApp as they tracked Cáceres and harrassed COPINH members.

The New York Times wrote:

The conversations reveal, the lawyers said, that the orders to threaten Copinh and sabotage its protests came from Desa executives who were exercising control over security forces in the area, issuing instructions and paying for police units’ food, lodging and radio equipment

Miguel Bustillo,  a member of the lawyer's group said:

"What the public ministry has yet to do is indict the people who hired Bustillo to plan the operation."

Honduras has arrested eight men charged with carrying out the murder of Berta Cáceres in 2016. DESA has repeatedly denied any involvement in the harassment or murder of Cáceres. 

MACCIH to investigate DESA, government contracts, funding

The Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH) announced Thursday that it would begin investigating, not the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres, but the funding and government contracts of DESA, the company building the Agua Zarca dam for possible corruption and money laundering.

Mission spokesperson, Juan Jimenez Mayor announced the OAS mission would look into DESA, how it got its government contracts for the Agua Zarca dam and ENEE electricity purchase, and how it grew from a company with less than $1000 in capital in 2009 to have over $17 million in 2014.  In particular, Jimenez Mayor said the Mission wanted to verify the source of the funds, and whether DESA was money laundering.

Another aspect of the Agua Zarca project that Jimenez Mayor said was interesting was the awarding of the original environmental license in 2010, and the enlarged project environmental license in 2011.  The latter, approved by Dario Roberto Cardona, then sub secretary of the Secretaria de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente (SERNA).  Jimenez Mayor noted that while Cardona was being prosecuted for issuing the expanded environmental license in 2011 without proper consultation with the indigenous communities around Agua Zarca, he wondered why the issuer of the first environmental license, then Minister Rigoberto Cuellar, was not being investigated for the same crime since the same problem exists with the first environmental license issued in 2010. 

Jimenez Mayor also pointed to Congress, and its approval of an electricity buying contract from DESA to ENEE that called for ENEE to purchase more electricity than initially agreed on.

DESA denies there was an increase in its electricity production licensed by Cardona, and maintains it properly consulted with the municipality through open meetings, and that ILO 169 has not been codified into Honduran law.

The Agua Zarca project remains suspended.  The recent withdrawal of two of the international funding agencies (the Netherlands Development Bank (FMO) and the Finland Fund for Industrial Cooperation (FINFUND)) has not resulted in its cancelation because much of the funding comes from the Banco Interamericano de Integración Económica (BCIE) which has not withdrawn its support.

Being An Environmentalist Can Kill You

Global Witness, an NGO that exposes corruption and environmental abuse, released a report this week that called Honduras the most dangerous country to be an environmentalist. 

The numbers are heartbreaking.

Global Witness looked at the period 2002 - 2014 to accumulate statistics on the death of environmental activists around the world.  Brazil had the highest number of deaths, at 477, while Honduras had 111. Almost all of those deaths happened since 2010.  If you look at the rate of death of environmentalists over the last 5 years, it turns out Honduras leads, with 101 deaths.

Here's how the numbers work. 

From 2002 to 2009, Honduras had 0, 1, 2, or 3 deaths per year of environmentalists.  Starting with 2010, those numbers skyrocketed:  21 deaths in 2010, 33 deaths in 2011, 25 deaths in 2012, 10 deaths in 2013, and 12 deaths in 2014.  90% of the Honduran environmentalist deaths occurred in the last 5 years!

Global Witness found that mining and other extractive industries caused the largest number of deaths in 2014, with a tie for the second spot between Water and Dams, and Agribusiness.  These three accounted for 84% of the environmentalist deaths in 2014.

This violence has come down particularly hard on indigenous environmentalists.  Three Tolupan leaders were shot and killed during an anti-mining protest in 2014. 

The Global Witness report came out the same day that another Honduran indigenous environmentalist, Berta Cáceres, won the Goldman Prize:

The Goldman Environmental Prize honors grassroots environmental heroes from the world’s six inhabited continental regions....The Prize recognizes individuals for sustained and significant efforts to protect and enhance the natural environment, often at great personal risk.

Cáceres was honored for her grassroots organizing of opposition to the Agua Zarca dam project.  Agua Zarca was a joint project of the Honduran company Desarrollos Energeticos S. A. (DESA) and SinoHydro, the Chinese government owned company recognized as the largest dam builder in the world.  DESA received a $24 million loan from the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Economico for the project. 

As the Goldman page for Cáceres notes, the project was promoted and approved in a corrupt and fraudulent fashion, failing to do the required consultation with the local Lenca communities that lived within the region slated for the reservoir, a violation of ILO 169 and other treaties to which Honduras is a signatory.

DESA was founded in 2008 and claims to be a Honduran pro-environment company:

DESA has always been concerned for the protection of the environment and because of this all its business practices and maintenance follow strict guidelines to be in harmony with nature.

Nature maybe, but not in harmony with the Honduran people, who they seems to despise. 
 DESA guards killed Tomas Garcia while he was protesting against the dam.  They attacked protesters with guns, clubs, and machetes over and over again during the protest, with impunity for all the wounds and the death inflicted.

DESA doesn't list its ownership or any company officers. DESA was able to employ and command Honduran military troops in the protection of of the dam site and equipment. DESA also arranged for trumped up arms charges to be filed against Berta Caceres, to try and jail her to stop the protests.

Ultimately they've failed.  SinoHydro has left Honduras and the dam project is halted.

And Berta Caceres has been honored with the Goldman Prize, which we can hope will help protect her from the fate of too many other Honduran environmental activists.