Political Quotes

“I want to speak about a subject that many Senators are aware of and should be deeply concerned about. As we remember, in the early morning hours of March 3, 2016, Honduras lost one of its most courageous and charismatic indigenous leaders, Berta Caceres. Ms. Caceres was the general coordinator of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, COPINH. She was gunned down by assassins in her home in the village of La Esperanza, Intibuca. Berta Caceres spent her life defending indigenous rights, particularly to land and natural resources. In 2015, she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her outstanding activism and leadership. She and COPINH had been supporting land struggles throughout western Honduras, and because of that--because she was exercising rights guaranteed by Honduran law and international law--she and the communities that she and COPINH supported were the frequent targets of death threats. In Rio Blanco, her organization and the community of Rio Blanco were threatened repeatedly as they engaged in peaceful protests to protect the river and their way of life from the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam by DESA, a Honduran company supported by international banks. It was as a result of the threats she received for supporting the Rio Blanco struggle that Ms. Caceres was granted precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.…”