The process has begun in Honduras to whitewash any possible investigation into who killed indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. Minister of Security Julian Pachecho Tinoco
confirms there's strong international pressure to solve her murder, but the police in Honduras have issued no statements beyond the first day, when they told the press they were holding 2 witnesses and a "suspect".
The Honduran Police have floated trial balloons in the press and social media blaming Cáceres, because even though she supposedly had government protection, she was staying at a house in Intibuca that they claimed not to know was hers, blaming her for not telling them. They've also floated the rumor that it was someone known to her, perhaps an ex-lover who killed her since there was no sign of forced entry into the house. What they haven't done is investigate any of the people who likely murdered her.
That's not just our conclusion, but also
that (translated
here) of the Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y Justicia (MADJ) in Honduras. None of the theories the National Police have proposed for her murder have followed up on the threats to her life and liberty disclosed by her to the police in Honduras on numerous occasions.
Among the suspects that MADJ says the police should be investigating are the local management of Desarrollos Energéticos, and particularly its managing engineer for the project Segio Rodríguez who has threatened the COPINH protest marchers, including Cáceres, with death. MADJ also identifies the mayor of San Francisco de Ojuera, the town whose extent includes the region disputed. Mayor Raul Pineda ignored the rights of the Lenca people to their land.
Then there's the National Police, and the Military Police, who violently break up peaceful protests in the region, sometimes shooting and killing protesters. They have previously planted evidence in Cáceres's car during traffic stops and arrested her on charges that could lead to a 20 year prison sentence. Luckily for Cáceres, that case failed to thrive in court.
Desarrollos Energéticos, SA. is the union of two previous energy companies in Honduras, Inversiones Las Jacarandas, represented by José Eduardo Atala Zeblah, which provided two thirds ($1.6 million) of the initial capital of the company, and Potencia y Energia de Mesoamerica (PEMSA), which supplied the other third ($832,500). PEMSA was represented in the merger by Gerardo Carrasco Escobar. However, as Rights Action
noted in their report on the Agua Zarca dam conflict, little is known about Desarrollos Energeticos, Las Jacarandas, or PEMSA because Honduras has public access to corporation ownership records, which facilitates the obscuring of company ownership. This same kind of corporate ownership secrecy often leads to corruption by what the financial industry calls
Politically Exposed Persons (PEPS), those in high government positions amenable to embezzlement and massive bribery.
However, Rights Action
also notes that Jose Eduardo Atala Zeblah and his brothers Jacobo Atala Zeblah and Pedro Atala Zeblah are on DESA's board of directors. Jacobo is also Director of Honduran operations for the Banco de Centroamerica (BAC). Jose Eduardo Atala served as Vice President of the Association of American Chambers of Commerce in Latin America in Washington, DC, in 2011. He also served as the Honduran representative to the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (CABEI) which undoubtedly served him well since it loaned DESA $24.4 million for the Agua Zarca dam project in 2012.
All we know about PEMSA is that its a Honduran holding company in the energy sector, and that it did not go away after forming part of DESA. In 2014 and 2015, PEMSA
engaged in other energy projects in Honduras, including the solar energy project at Agua Fria, near Nacaome, where its listed as the local partner of the Norwegian companies that supplied the technology and funded the project.
The Atala Zeblah brothers are cousins to Camilo Alejandro Atala Fraj, arguably now the richest man in Honduras. Camilo Atala owns the Banco Ficohsa, a financial empire that stretches across 9 Latin American Countries. Camilo Atala strongly backed the 2009 coup in Honduras He was the head of the Consejo Empresarial de America Latina (CEAL) when it contracted with Lanny Davis's lobbying firm to lobby Hillary Clinton, then head of the State Department, and the US Congress, to accept the coup. Ironically in 2015 while CEAL was awarding the Banco Ficohsa their Bank of the Year award, it was being
named in Panama as one of 13 banks that allegedly laundered the proceeeds of Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli during his term in office. In Honduras, the Banco Ficohsa
threatened to sue any Honduran media that wrote about the allegations of money laundering calling them unfounded rumors despite the numerous articles in the Panamanian press that were their sources of information. They even went so far as to claim that "We are not under investigation by any foreign entities", desmonstrably false at the time since they were being investigated by the Panamanian Corruption Prosecutor. So far the Banco Ficohsa has avoided prosecution in Honduras, perhaps because four of the members of the Honduran Bank Oversight Committee (CNBS in Spanish) are former Banco Ficohsa executives and directors.
Recently, a new dam project in the same region, on the Rio Cangel, was awarded to a US firm, Rio Energy LLC, owned by Peter L. Ochs of
Capital III, along with Canadian firm
Hydrosys Consultants. Hydrosys has sole responsibility for the planning and construction according to their own
project description. The partnership, called Blue Energy, allegedly told the Honduran government the dam was in the department of Santa Barbara, and therefore not on the Lenca land of the Rio Blanco community, but when they walked to the edges of their community in 2014, they found the dam being constructed in their territory, without consultation or their permission, a violation of ILO 169. Nor are these two dam projects the only ones in the Lenca area. Blue Energy is also currently doing a study for a project called the
Zompopero dam, and Capital III
plans on financing a total of 4 dams in Honduras, all of them in Lenca territory.
Because the Rio Blanco Lenca community is now fighting two dams the Honduran government has imposed on it without getting their consent, Berta Cåceres found herself mired in yet another set of protests and subsequently received death threats. On January 27 of this year, a bus load of Rio Blanco protestors was stopped on their way to protest the Rio Cangel project by Honduran police in the community of Agua Caliente and the bus was searched for the presence of Berta Cáceres, who fortunately was not aboard the bus but rather back in Rio Blanco. She got
word that the police in Agua Caliente were going to kidnap her, beat her, sexually violate her, and more. Last April Cáceres had
said that "men close to Blue Energy" or "close to politicians" and "death squads promoted from government policies" were behind the death threats she was receiving.
men close to Blue Energy
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men close to Blue Energy
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men close to Blue Energy,” a transnational Canadian company looking to build a dam in the Rio Blanco area in western Honduras, or people “close to politicians” and “death squads promoted from government policies” were behind the death threats leveled against her
This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Berta-Caceres-Received-Death-Threats-from-Canadian-Company-20160304-0027.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english
men close to Blue Energy,” a transnational Canadian company looking to build a dam in the Rio Blanco area in western Honduras, or people “close to politicians” and “death squads promoted from government policies” were behind the death threats leveled against her
This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Berta-Caceres-Received-Death-Threats-from-Canadian-Company-20160304-0027.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english
On February 26, around 5 pm, Caceres received a phone call that told her a car was circling around her house in La Esperanza. Cáceres was in San Pedro Sula at the time, and
told police there that the two subjects named in expedientes
1001-2015-00107 and 1001-2015-00008 in Intibuca for carrying unregistered weapons and homicide who were threatening to kill her. Both had been released by the court in Intibuca at the behest of the Honduran Public Prosecutor's office.
Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 3 at 1 am in the morning by two armed individuals in a white truck. So far the Honduran police haven't made any effort to identify or interview any of those she told them were threatening to kill her, instead pursuing theories that blame her for her own death. This is how murders are whitewashed in Honduras, by blaming the victims.
