How "blatant impunity" continues to prevent justice in murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres

In 2016, Honduran Indigenous environmental activist Berta Cáceres was murdered inside her home in La Esperanza, Honduras, by hired hitmen. Cáceres was fighting against the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on sacred Lenca land in southwestern Honduras, and had won the Goldman Environmental Prize for her campaign against the dam in 2015. The seven men — who were hired to kill Cáceres by the executives of the Honduran company, DESA, behind the Agua Zarca dam — were sentenced last month to up to 50 years in prison. Since Cáceres's killing, her family and fellow activists have demanded an international commission into the murder but her daughter Laura Zúñiga Cáceres says Honduras never allowed them to pursue one. An independent investigation by other countries revealed that the state "had evidence to prosecute more people involved in my mother’s murder, but had not done so," Cáceres told Democracy Now! Despite the inaction in pursuing further investigations, "the United States government has also never cut funding for the government of Juan Orlando Hernández, which is a dictatorship that continues to kill," she says. "There is a blatant impunity in this case and thus the persecution against a lot of land and water defenders in Honduras."

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