Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Case of Murdered Ecologist Goes to Court

By - - and IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

TEGUCIGALPA, Feb 24 2007 (IPS) - The February 1995 murder of environmentalist Janeth Kawas will be presented in May before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, for impunity and delay of justice, human rights activist Bertha Oliva told Tierramérica. Kawas, the first woman and environmental activist to be murdered in Honduras for her efforts to protect the Punta Sal nature reserve on the Caribbean, was killed by unknown assailants when she was reviewing reports at her home in Tela, a city 450 km from the capital.

Oliva says that after 12 years “the perpetrators remain free, with impunity, despite testimony with a wealth of details about the crime. Furthermore, we see an escalation against environmental leaders, without the government taking action on the death threats against those people.”

In the past decade, seven activists have been killed in Honduras, mostly in the northeastern region of Olancho.