Peter Welch: “over the past 6 years, my office, and the office of my predecessor Senator Leahy, have received reports of recurring…”

“over the past 6 years, my office, and the office of my predecessor Senator Leahy, have received reports of recurring threats, attacks, arbitrary arrests, and assassinations of members of the Guapinol, Tocoa, and other communities in the Bajo Aguan region of Honduras. Those crimes were intended to intimidate and silence those who opposed an open-pit iron oxide mine and the Ecotek Thermoelectric Project which threaten their livelihoods and the region's environment and who challenged the companies and corrupt officials who profit from those projects. Then on Saturday, September 14, I learned of the murder of Honduran environmental activist Juan Lopez, the latest victim of this epidemic of vigilante violence. Mr. Lopez, a winner of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 2019, had been a victim of wrongful imprisonment, false prosecution, and had spoken out against corrupt officials in Tocoa. This outrageous crime struck a nerve for me because Mr. Lopez's murder was the latest in a pattern of similar killings. There have been six other assassinations of members of the Guapinol water defenders. No one has been prosecuted or punished for those crimes or for the murders of scores of other environmental and human rights defenders in Honduras. Juan Lopez, like Berta Caceres--whose murder in 2016 was linked to officers of the company responsible for the hydroelectric project she and others in her indigenous community opposed--was a person of integrity.…”