Mary Lawlor, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, has asked for an impartial inquiry into the murders of two environmental activists in Honduras just days after they were shot dead. Unidentified individuals assassinated Aly Dominguez, 38, and Jairo Bonilla, 28, of the town of Guapinol in Honduras’s eastern Colon Department on Saturday. The killings were related to a robbery, according to local authorities.
“It is critical that an independent inquiry examine the murders of the two defenders in Guapinol, Honduras,” Lawlor stated on Twitter on Wednesday. “Which must take into account the potential that they have been retaliated against for their work protecting human rights,” she said. Dominguez and Bonilla had co-founded the Municipal Committee for the Defense of Common and Public Goods for the city of Tocoa, some 8 kilometers (5 miles) from Guapinol. According to the environmentalist organization, they have been fighting the operation of an open-pit iron oxide mine in a forest reserve since 2015, a concession they believe was illegally issued to a firm owned by powerful businessman Lenir Perez. The mine’s operator, Inversions Los Pinares, maintains that the concession is valid. It did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Authorities claimed Dominguez and Bonilla were riding their bikes to work for a regional cable television provider, collecting service fees, when they were ambushed in a remote location. Angel Herrera, a Colon police spokeswoman, informed local media that the incident was motivated by an effort to rob the money they were carrying. Guapinol Resiste, the ecological group to which Dominguez and Bonilla belonged, denied this assertion on Wednesday. “It was not a robbery. They were slain for safeguarding rivers from unlawful mining. “Justice for Aly and Jairo,” the organization declared on Facebook. It was stated that the crooks did not take the money, but instead gave it back to their boss.
Many environmentalists and local communities in Central American nations oppose open-pit mining and the construction of hydroelectric dams, which can pollute rivers, damage water sources, and displace people. Berta Caceres, an indigenous activist and environmentalist who was protesting the development of a hydroelectric project in western Honduras, was assassinated in March 2016. Six hired killers and two officials from a corporation sponsoring the dam’s development were eventually convicted.
