Activists and defence team agree to start the process to apply for amnesty. Tough statement from UNHCHR.
With a two to one split verdict, the Tocoa Sentencing Court found six of the eight Guapinol water and life defenders guilty.
José Márquez Márquez, Kelvin Romero Martínez, José Abelino Cedillo Cantarero, Porfirio Sorto Cedillo, Ewer Cedillo Cruz and Orbin Nahún Hernández were found responsible for the crimes of simple and aggravated damages against the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares, and illegal deprivation of liberty and aggravated damages against the company’s contractor Santos Corea.
The other two defenders, Arnol Alemán and Jeremías Martínez Díaz, were acquitted of all charges.
All are members of the Comité Municipal de Defensa de los Bienes Comunes y Públicos de Tocoa (CMDBCP).
The sentence comes after almost 30 months of unjust, illegal and arbitrary pre-trial detention, against which countless national and international organisations and multilateral bodies, such as the United Nations, have spoken out.
Edy Tabora, from the legal defence team of the eight defenders, condemned the decision of judges Ricardo Rodríguez Barahona and Henry Duarte Zaldívar.
“This is a clear political decision based on the interests of the company. It is a corporate decision made between the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares and the two judges. It is a ruling that reflects the prostration of the institutional framework.
A rigged ruling
This split ruling,” Tabora continued, “shows that we were right all along and that the comrades are innocent. For three years, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been orchestrating a judicial set-up, but it has never been able to sustain it.
According to the defender, the evidence presented was based on witnesses who “came to lie and who responded to economic interests, since they are all linked to the company”.
“It is a fabricated ruling based on arbitrariness. They were never able to prove the existence of the damages they were accused of, nor the participation of the eight defenders. The whole thing was a farce,” the defence lawyer said.
Faced with a situation that has become extremely serious, the six defenders and the legal team agreed to present a document requesting the application of the Amnesty Decree, recently approved by the National Congress.
“It is important to clarify that they are not guilty, that they consider themselves political prisoners, that they have done nothing wrong and that they have only defended the environment and water. They demand that their innocence be recognised.
However,” explained Tabora, “as they see no guarantee of independence in the judiciary, nor that any possible appeals that might be lodged would be prompt and effective, they decided to apply for amnesty.
Amnesty Decree 04-2022, already sanctioned by President Xiomara Castro – who in her inauguration speech called for freedom for the Guapinol defenders – and published in the Official Gazette, is a tool for defenders who have been criminalised and prosecuted during the 12 post-coup years to obtain their freedom.
The decree foresees several grounds, among others, that they have been arbitrarily condemned for acts in defence of sovereignty, territory, common goods (…), that their actions have been criminalised by justice operators “for political motivations in a context of democratic abnormality, generating extreme social conflict for economic reasons”.
Also, that the crimes for which they have been prosecuted fall within the normative framework of the old and new Penal Code.
In these respects, the six condemned defenders meet all the requirements for the immediate application of an amnesty. The court will soon have to convene an ad hoc hearing so that the defence can present their arguments and demonstrate that they meet the requirements for amnesty to be applied to them.
Reactions
The Office in Honduras of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a statement expressing its deep concern over the ruling against the Guapinol River defenders.
“We reaffirm that the Guapinol defenders are defenders of human rights, land, territory and the environment, who carry out commendable work in favour of democracy in the country.
They have served more than 29 months of arbitrary deprivation of liberty and, as determined by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, they should be released and receive full reparation”, said Isabel Albaladejo, representative of the OHCHR in Honduras.
The Office called on the authorities to guarantee the life and integrity of the convicted and acquitted defenders, their families, the community and their legal representatives.
“The State must guarantee that the right to defend human rights is developed without any kind of arbitrary or abusive pressure that hinders its legitimate exercise”, it added.
Finally, the OHCHR recognised that the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office were not governed by the principle of objectivity and failed to meet the minimum standard of proof to demonstrate the guilt of the defenders.
“We regret that the judicial decisions (pre-trial detention and oral and public trial) show signs of lack of impartiality and lack of motivation, which translates into a violation of the guarantees of due process and the right to a fair trial,” he said.
The Secretary of State for Human Rights (Sedh) also strongly condemned the case, recalling in a communiqué how this ministry provided follow-up and accompaniment to the Guapinol defenders “who for defending the right to land have been criminalised and unjustly detained, and who today receive a guilty verdict that this institution does not share, and joins the voices that call for the fulfilment of a true application of the right to justice”.
Background
In recent years, at least 32 people have been prosecuted for defending the territory and rivers that flow down from the “Montaña de Botaderos” National Park, whose core zone is being threatened by the mining company Inversiones Los Pinares (NE Holdings Inc and NE Holdings Subsidiary Inc), formerly EMCO Mining Company.
In this area there are around 34 water sources that supply cities and communities. The Guapinol and San Pedro rivers in particular are suffering the main impacts. The communities and populations of the area were never consulted before concessions were granted to the mining company.
The holding companies that manage Inversiones Los Pinares are controlled by Lenir Pérez Solís, already involved in other mining conflicts in the past, and Ana Facussé Madrid, daughter of the notorious palm landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum.
Facussé’s name has been linked in the past to the serious agrarian conflict in Bajo Aguán, where dozens of organised peasants lost their lives, and to the territorial dispossession in the Zacate Grande peninsula.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined that the Guapinol defenders “are being arbitrarily detained” and that this measure “contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”.
It also considered that the appropriate remedy is “to release the defenders immediately, granting them the right to obtain the necessary reparation for the violation of their rights”.
The state never responded and ignored the recommendations.
